Donate to Reason! Because What Other Magazine Was Interviewing Eldridge Cleaver About Nelson Mandela in 1986?

We’re finishing up Day Two of Reason’s annual
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Don’t know about you, but I’ve been spending this death-day of
Nelson
Mandela–one of Reason’s “35
Heroes of Freedom” in our 35th anniversary issue 10 years
ago—re-living the anti-apartheid politics and controversies of
mid-1980s America, when the protest kids were building
pro-divestment shantytowns, William F. Buckley was writing about
how
Mandela belonged in his jail cell, and Ronald Reagan was trying
(and ultimately failing)
to
find wiggle room between rhetorical anti-racism and practical
anti-communism. (As in many things Reagan, checking the original
video is always a fascinating
trip.)

It’s hard to exaggerate just how massive and distorting was the
Cold War lens through which we all inevitably judged—and often
affected the outcomes of—every faraway controversy. The apartheid
struggle was a proxy war of communism vs. capitalism, Soviets vs.
Americans, and for many of the most serious proxy warriors, it was
more important that Mandela was on the wrong side of the divide,
and that the African National Congress mixed some communism and
violence with its anti-totalitarianism. Sure, he was a political
prisoner of a horridly unjust regime, but the man sometimes talked
about nationalizing factories!

I was trying to put into words just how
wrong I find that approach, then and now, but then I conducted a
“Nelson Mandela” search in the Reason
archive, and discovered that former Black Panther Eldridge
Cleaver said it much better, in a fascinating cover interview he
gave to Lynn Scarlett and Bill Kaufmann in 1986. Relevant
excerpt:

REASON: A lot of the Panthers seem to be, personally, pretty
strong individualists, like you, and yet you espoused revolutionary
socialism, collectivism. Did you notice the inconsistencies?

Cleaver: At the time I didn’t notice it. It’s one thing to study
Marxism on paper, living in a capitalistic country where you have
individual freedoms and so forth—you don’t really see the
relationship between the ideology and the form of government that
comes out of that ideology. Now, when I had a chance to go and live
in communist countries this individualism came into conflict with
the state apparatus, and that’s when I recoiled against it. But
when I was here I was looking at Marxism-Leninism as a weapon, as a
tool, to fight against the status quo, and you know, it’s just a
quality of human beings that when they are trying to tear something
down they don’t pay enough attention.

Just like in South Africa right now. They went to visit Nelson
Mandela, and they asked him, “Would you prefer apartheid to
communism?” And his attitude was, Communism is better than
apartheid. Because apartheid has him in prison and has had him in
prison for 20 years. Well, you get a guy in a communist country who
has been in prison there for 20 years, and he will tell you, “I
would rather live under apartheid,” because he could leave. But the
truth is that any form of constraint on our freedoms is not
acceptable.

And in fact Mandela cut it out
with the nationalization talk once he left jail, and will be
remembered for something almost no politicians outside of George
Washington are ever noted for: choosing not to exercise the power
he had. I think Hugh Hewitt said it most
succinctly today:

John Podhoretz tweeted out that Nelson Mandela could have chosen
to be–had the power to become–an even greater monster than Mugabe.

Instead, Mandela chose to become a saint. A great leader,
a great Christian, a great example. The world cannot honor him
enough as it should hope that all people offered the complete power
he was would act as he did.

Anyway, Reason’s long-form Q&As are my single favorite part
of the archive. We published an
eBook collection a year ago of some of the classics:
Ronald Reagan and
F.A. Hayek in 1975, Timothy
Leary in 1977, and more. Since our last webathon, we’ve
conducted some barn-burners with the likes of
George Will,
Jeremy Scahill, Judge
Alex Kozinski and Rep.
Justin Amash. Debating and testing out the philosophies and
tactics of public figures is one of our best tools for representing
your views in the national discussion. You know what makes that
easier to do? MONEY MAKES THAT EASIER TO DO.

So please donate whatever
you can, whenever you can (by which I mean THIS WEEK), and in the
comments tell us who we should interview in 2014!