RUSH: Mount Airy, North Carolina. George, you're first. Great to have you.
CALLER: Rush, it's an honor to talk to you on the radio today.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I'm calling about, obviously, Nelson Mandela. I've been doing a lot of history of South Africa. I travel with people from United States to Robben Island on a yearly basis, and we do a lot of history of, you know, Nelson Mandela and so forth.
RUSH: You travel to Robben Island on a yearly basis, you said?
RUSH: With people from America?
CALLER: From America, yes. I'm a former South African living in the United States.
RUSH: All right. Okay.
CALLER: So, anyway, what a lot of people do not know, and when I go to Robben Island and we walk around there and we go to his cell, a lot of people do not know why is it that Nelson Mandela went to jail for 27 years. So, you know, I tell people --
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is a great point, if you're gonna say what I think you're gonna say. Now, this is key, because you're saying most people don't know why he was in jail for 27 years. You know what else they don't know? What he could have done to get out --
RUSH: -- during that whole period that he refused to do.
CALLER: Yeah. That's why I called. I've listened to your radio station for a lot of years, and I'm like, you know, when I go to South Africa, the first thing I know people are gonna say, "But why is it he went to jail?"
RUSH: Yeah, okay, so why was it?
CALLER: So most Americans believe that he went there for his political views.
RUSH: No, they think he went there because he was black, and because of apartheid.
CALLER: Yes. And apartheid. I grew up in apartheid. I've got a lot of black friends living in South Africa, and, you know, people do not really know why he went there. And I tell everybody it's because he was incarcerated not for his political views but for the involvement of 23 different acts of sabotage, that he wanted to overthrow the government.
RUSH: Call it terrorism. He was in prison for acts of terrorism --
RUSH: -- that he would not renounce.
CALLER: Yes. You know, I mean, people just do not understand that he was caught by the police with his fellow conspirators, and they were in possession of 48,000 Soviet-made anti-personnel mines and 210,000 hand grenades. Can you imagine if Martin Luther King would have done something like that? And people do not really understand why it is that he ended up there.
RUSH: You know, the thing is now, George, given everything happening, people may not want to know it now.
RUSH: I know you're telling the truth. Did Mandela's group, were they ever tied to killings?
RUSH: They were?
CALLER: Winnie Mandela.
RUSH: Well, she did the necklacing, yeah. One of the punishments, the ANC, well known, was to put a tire --
CALLER: They went unpunished. They just threw out the case and Winnie went free. But Nelson Mandela was so embarrassed because of the case in South Africa then that he actually divorced her
RUSH: Yeah. No, when I said punishment, I didn't mean against him. What Winnie Mandela would do, necklacing was a technique of keeping people in line in the ANC. They'd put an empty tire around somebody's neck, load it with gasoline, and light it.
RUSH: And was it called necklacing.
RUSH: But the question, did Mandela, before he went to prison, did he engage, he and his group engage in anything that caused people to die? Or did he just have possession of the Soviet grenades and mines?
CALLER: No, they were in possession of that. They had planned a lot of things in KwaZulu. I grew up in KwaZulu. There was also another wing of the ANC that actually grew in the Durban area.
RUSH: I remember all of this now. It's all coming back, this stuff going on in the 80's and early 90's. I remember this like it was yesterday.
RUSH: But here's the thing. Nelson Mandela was in jail for 27 years, in prison, Robben Island. He could have gotten out. They offered him every year an opportunity to be released, and all he would have had to have done was seriously renounce terrorism.
RUSH: And he wouldn't do it.
CALLER: No. And that is why I also called because, you know, I think Mandela was a great political figure in South Africa. Everybody liked him and he was a great speaker, just like President Obama here. He always talked in South Africa about denouncing violence. You know, talk the talk and walk the walk. But this has been my problem with Mandela. How can you be against violence but you yourself were involved with so much hate and violence.
RUSH: George, here's the thing. You've run up against something that happens worldwide involving leftists and the media, and that is fairy tales are created around them. The primary point with Mandela, 27 years in jail, black, apartheid. Okay, so you build the story he was put in jail because he was black, because of apartheid, because the white leaders were racist. I mean, that's it. And then anything Mandela does after that premise is established makes him a hero. Even if he renounces violence, or even if he sponsors violence because it would be justified, given those circumstances. But fairy tales are built around leftist heroes.
The Kennedys. I mean, the fairy tales around leftist heroes in this country, you could write books about. It's just what the left does. They have to camouflage and mask who they really are and what they really believe, and that's why what's happening now is happening. Now, Mandela did have some great human traits. There's no question that when he got out of this, he was not bitter. He did say some really thoughtful, brilliant, pithy things when he got out. He invited his jailers to his inauguration, for example. The point is now he's been martyred, and even all of this truthful news may be stuff that people just don't want to hear. "I'd rather think of Mandela as the way I'm hearing about him in the media. That just confuses me. That makes me think about things I don't want to think about." The real question is, when you go to Robben Island on these tourist trips, is there a picture of Obama in the jail cell?
CALLER: No, there's absolutely nothing in there.
RUSH: Well, there will be. You just watch, your next trip, there will be a picture of Obama actually being in the cell. That will be the next thing.
RUSH: Thanks for that. That's helpful. If you people only knew the stuff thrown at me literally seconds before the microphone goes live. For example, "Hey, let's be straight here, South African government of De Klerk and Botha," which is how the Reverend Jackson pronounces his name. By the way, I have to tell this. I've been looking for this guy, and I would love to find the Nightline footage.
There was, in the midst of all this, the apartheid movement coming under worldwide scrutiny and the divestment movement... I mean, it was hot and heavy, folks, in the mid- to late eighties. Nightline went over there, Ted Koppel, did a town meeting, and after the town meeting, they interviewed somebody in the government of P. W. Botha, Pieter Botha, who was the prime minister. He was the head honcho of South Africa prior to F. W. De Klerk.
This spokesman, I have never forgotten this guy. I can see him and hear the way he spoke. Koppel would you ask him a question. "Well, what about the brutality?" and this guy would say (literally, this is how he sounded), "Uh, Mr. Botha is, of course, for total..." He smiled and he had rotten teeth, and was just the weirdest looking guy. "Mr. Botha..." The guy's name was Pieter Botha. Mr. Botha. It was just one of those things. You know, I study voices and the way people sound and speak, and I've never forgotten this.
I've been looking, Google searching trying to find this guy and that footage just to relive it, just to play it for you, 'cause I'm not even doing it justice. This guy was in utter denial of what was going on. "Mr. Botha is an angel. Mr. Botha doesn't know what you're talking about. Mr. Botha..." and then they'd cut to Reverend Jackson. "Let me tell you, this Botha guy? To hell with this Botha guy, this Botha guy!"
It was just intense. But the South African government, they were not angelic. I mean, there was a war going on with the ANC. They engaged in their own acts of violence, trying to put down the anti-apartheid movement. I don't want anybody concluding here just 'cause of what the prior caller said about Mandela that there weren't some justifications in trying to take on this apartheid government.
RUSH: Look, folks, for what it's worth, Mandela was convicted of 196 acts of terrorism. He never engaged in things that caused people to lose their life, but he did terrorize, sabotage government institutions, installations -- and, if he would have just renounced terrorism in those 27 years, he could have gotten out of prison.