Nelson Mandela, South African freedom fighter and Former president died yesterday at the age of 95-years old. The news of his death came to everyone as a shock as he was revered by many of today’s politicians as a human rights icon.
But according to a new article by the Huffington Post, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s name was on the US Terrorist Watch List Until 2008 when former President George W. Bush signed a bill to remove the South African hero from it.
Speaking about the then US perception of Nelson Mandela by adding his name to the terrorist watch list, Condoleezza Rice, the US’s former Secretary of State called the restrictions a “rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela.”
“He had no place on our government’s terror watch list, and I’m pleased to see this bill finally become law,” then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said in 2008.
ALSO SEE: It Has Been Difficult To Cope Without Mandela: Winnie & Zindzi.
Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) was designated as a terrorist organisation by the then South Africa’s apartheid regime for its fight against the nation’s legalised system of racial segregation that lasted between 1948 and 1994.
Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also described Mandela’s ANC as a “typical terrorist organisation” in 1987. And she refused to impose sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime. Former US President, Ronald Reagan did the same as Thatcher.
In 1986, former Vice President Dick Cheney, then a congressman, voted along with 179 other members of the House against a non-binding resolution to recognise the ANC and call on the South African government to release Mandela from prison. The measure finally passed, but not before a veto attempt by Reagan.
In 2000, Cheney maintained that he’d cast the correct vote.