Claims Mandela Trained by Mossad are Denied
Nelson Mandela was ‘trained in weaponry and sabotage by Mossad operatives in 1962’ according to claims on Friday from an Exclusive report by Ha’aretz. Apparently, the recently revealed top secret document claims that the Nobel peace prize laureate and the first Black South African president received the training in Ethiopia during his visit to several African countries in 1962 only months before he was arrested for his 27 year jail term. The subject of the top secret letter which was sent by the Mossad to the foreign ministry was titled ‘the Black Pimpernel’, an oft coined reference to Mandela by the South African media, however Ha’aretz states that the operatives at the time were unaware of Mandela’s true identity.
The true identity of ‘the Black Pimpernel’ was later discovered at the time of Mandela’s arrest, as the letter continues to declare: “It now emerges from photographs that have been published in the press about the arrest in South Africa of the ‘Black Pimpernel’ that the trainee from Rhodesia used an alias, and the two men are one and the same.”
Are the claims a case of mistaken identity or rather clandestine operations? The Nelson Mandela Foundationdenied the ‘alleged interaction with Israeli operatives’ stating: “The Nelson Mandela Foundation can confirm that it has not located any evidence in Nelson Mandela’s private archive (which includes his 1962 diary and notebook) that he interacted with an Israeli operative during his tour of African countries in that year.”
The denial of the report by the Foundation does however reveal that he did ‘receive military training from Algerian freedom fighters in Morocco and from the Ethiopian Riot Battalion at Kolfe outside Addis Ababa, before returning to South Africa in July 1962’.
MANDELA’S LEGACY
Mandela’s death on December 5th brought South Africa to a standstill with the country mourning his death and celebrating his life. His ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ after serving 27 years on Robben Island, a prison located on an island off the Cape Peninsula coastline, transformed the social and political dynamic of the country from a white minority rule to that of the ‘Rainbow nation’. After voting for the first time in his life on April 27th, 1994, he was later elected as President of South Africa in the first ever South African democratic electoral process on May 10th, 1994. Madiba (Mandela’s clan name) stepped down after his five year term, but remained the ‘father of the nation’.
Whether the claims that the previous South African president was trained by Mossad operatives are verifiable or not, The true legacy of Nelson Mandela is one of a man who trained and fought for democracy and was ‘an inspiration to all who are oppressed and deprived; to all who are opposed to oppression and deprivation’.
