Mandela's no saint - UK journo

2004-05-10 16:18

London - A British journalist sharply criticised Nelson Mandela on Monday, saying he was a "fig leaf" for an authoritarian government and people should view him as a fallible human being, not a saint.

Peter Hitchens told British Broadcasting Corporation radio that many critics of the country's former apartheid regime had "elevated Nelson Mandela into the status of superhero and a sort of political secular saint".

Hitchens , a columnist for the Mail on Sunday newspaper, is known for his provocative views,

He said: "It doesn't, sadly, I'm afraid, work, because he isn't that good and he acts unfortunately as a fig leaf for an increasingly unpleasant and authoritarian regime which... simply isn't getting the criticism it deserves because of Mr Mandela's image."

Hitchens has made a documentary about the 86-year-old Nobel Prize winner, Mandela: Beneath the Halo, which was due to be screened on Monday night on Channel 4.

'Not like a fairy tale'

He said that under President Thabo Mbeki, Mandela's chosen successor, South Africa was becoming a one-party state where freedom of speech was being eroded because no one wanted to exercise it.

The African National Congress last month won a landslide election victory that gave it a more than two-thirds majority in parliament and leadership of all nine provinces.

Hitchens said: "I don't think anyone can take away from Nelson Mandela the fact that he endured what he did and that he called for reconciliation.

"But, I think you shouldn't assume that, at the end of that, it was like a fairly tale where everybody lived happily ever after.

"I just do think people should examine him as a normal human being and as a politician, rather than as some kind of secular saint," said the journalist.

Send your reponse to Peter Hitchens to: [e-mail] , or visit his web site at www.peterhitchens.com.

- SAPA