MANDELA: YOUR ENEMIES ARE NOT OUR ENEMIES!

Eleven years ago today, anti-apartheid hero and South Africa's first democratically elected president Nelson Mandela died. His life was devoted to fighting against the settler oppression of Black South Africans. The price he paid was having to spend almost three decades in prison after the racist regime jailed him in the early 1960s for his anti-apartheid activities.

The mainstream media, when reflecting on Mandela's legacy, conveniently like to forget that he remained loyal to those who supported the anti-apartheid struggle. As he puts it in this clip of a TV appearance in which he responds to an audience member who wants him to disown leaders despised by Western nations: “Your enemies are not our enemies!”

We, as African Stream, can relate to this message. We have personally paid the price of choosing to have an independent editorial policy that does not align with the foreign policies of Western nations. For refusing to adopt their enemies as our own, we have been banned by social-media platforms such Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.