Via Paul Wells, from the unlikeliest of sources we are treated to the most coherent explanation of why the government was right to keep Winnie Mandela out of Canada:
Layton and Dion might want to ask a black South African office worker named Nicodemus Sono what he thinks of the woman now routinely referred to as a "human rights activist." In 1997, Sono described to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission how, nine years earlier and in the midst of the anti-apartheid struggle, Madikizela-Mandela and her henchmen savagely beat and killed his son, Lolo.Archbishop Desmond Tutu's commission concluded that Madikizela-Mandela was complicit in that killing and at least 11 other murders or attempted murders – sometimes because the victims were deemed (usually incorrectly) to be informers, sometimes because they were troublesome.
The commission also concluded that she took part in the savage beatings of others in the desperately poor black Johannesburg suburb of Soweto who ran afoul of her so-called Mandela United Football Club. One victim testified that she whipped him. In another instance, two youths had slogans carved into their chests and battery acid poured on the wounds.
At the time, Mandela United was part of the anti-apartheid African National Congress, a then illegal organization that is now the governing party. In 1997, a senior ANC official testified that during the late '80s the party was so alarmed by the tactics of Mandela United "thugs ... often directed by Madikizela-Mandela herself" that it tried to shut the unit down.
Good for Walkom for diffusing the truth. This is why no international figure who has been showered with accolades and pomp and circumstance ought to be completely shielded from probing inquiry. There are often inconvenient -- even ugly -- realities below the surface. This stuff almost makes you want to cut Rob Anders some slack.
