Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Obama Visits Mandela's Old Cell, But Won't Free His Own Political Prisoners
03 Jul 2013

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

Obama sees no irony in making a pilgrimage to Nelson Mandela’s place of political imprisonment, while holding 80,000 human beings in solitary confinement. “Racist South Africa’s treatment of Mandela and his co-revolutionists was downright benign and enlightened, compared to fate of U.S. prisoners who are deemed a threat to the prevailing order.”

Obama Visits Mandela’s Old Cell, But Won’t Free His Own Political Prisoners

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“Obama has no sympathy, however, for political prisoners of any race in his own country.”

President Barack Obama, a man of infinite cynicism, made a great show of going on pilgrimage to Nelson Mandela’s old prison cell on Robben Island, where the future first Black president of South Africa spent 18 of his 27 years of incarceration. With his wife and daughters in tow, Obama said he was “humbled to stand where men of such courage faced down injustice and refused to yield…. No shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit,” said the chief executive of the unchallenged superpower of mass incarceration, a nation whose population comprises only 5 percent of humanity, but is home to fully one-quarter of the Earth’s prison inmates.

True sociopaths, like the commander-in-chief who updates his Kill List every Tuesday, have no sense of shame, much less irony. Obama feigns awe at Mandela’s suffering and sacrifice in the prisons of apartheid South Africa, yet presides over a regime that, on any given day, holds 80,000 inmates in the excruciating torture of solitary confinement. During Nelson Mandela’s nearly three decades of imprisonment by the white regime, he spent a total of only about one week in solitary confinement. The rest of the time, despite often harsh treatment, backbreaking labor, and unhealthy conditions, Mandela and other political prisoners at Robben Island and other South African jails were typically housed together. Indeed, Mandela and his incarcerated comrades called the prisons their “university,” where they taught each other to become the future authorities over their jailers.

“A social death alien to the human species.”

Racist South Africa’s treatment of Mandela and his co-revolutionists was downright benign and enlightened, compared to fate of U.S. prisoners who are deemed a threat to the prevailing order. At U.S. high security facilities, the slightest evidence that an inmate is of a political bent of mind is cause for him to be condemned to a solitary existence for decades – a social death alien to the human species. At California’s Pelican Bay and the state prison at Corcoran, thousands of inmates are held in isolation, 80 of them for more than 20 years, the very definition of barbarism. Yet, Obama journeys across oceans and continents to stand for a photo op in the cell of a prisoner whose ordeal was nowhere near as horrific as the standard fare for political prisoners in his own country.

On his trip to South Africa, Obama proclaimed that “the world is grateful for the heroes of Robben Island.” And, that’s certainly true, although it was a U.S. intelligence agent who lured Nelson Mandela into a trap in 1962 that ultimately led to his capture and imprisonment. Obama has no sympathy, however, for political prisoners of any race in his own country. Former Black Panther Herman Wallace is thought to be the longest-serving prisoner in solitary confinement in the United States, having spent 40 years alone in a cell in Louisiana’s notorious Angola Prison. Obama could free him at any time, but of course, he won’t. He could emancipate Black Panther captive Russell Maroon Shoatz, who has spent nearly 30 years in solitary, or Republic of New Africa political prisoner Mutulu Shakur or any and all of the scores of other aging political prisoners – people whose dedication to human freedom is no less than Mandela’s, yet have been subjected to far worse treatment at American hands. Instead, Obama has doubled the bounty on Shakur’s comrade and sister, Assata, in exile in Cuba. She might even be on Obama’s Kill List – which is the real and authentic legacy of this country’s First Black President.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20130703_gf_ObamaPoliticalPrisoners.mp3

More Stories


  • Peace treaty signing
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Congo and Rwanda Agreement Will Benefit the West at the Expense of the Congolese People
    27 Jun 2025
    Maurice Carney is the Executive Director of Friends of the Congo. He joins us from Washington to discuss the ongoing crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda’s continued intervention…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    War Propaganda, State Controlled Media, and the End of African Stream
    25 Jun 2025
    African Stream's Pan-African, anti-imperialist journalistic perspectives made it the target of a state that colludes with corporate media to spread war propaganda.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: The Beirut Jokebook, June Jordan, 1982
    25 Jun 2025
    “What did the Arab lady say to the Israeli tank?”
  • x
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    The Tactical Failure of Israel/U.S. Attacks on Iran Is Leading Both to a Strategic Disaster
    25 Jun 2025
    The U.S. and Israel’s unchecked aggression has plunged the world into a lawless state of imperial violence—yet their latest attacks on Iran have only exposed the limits of colonial power. As Western…
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Rwanda: Victoire Ingabire Must Not Suffer the Fate of Kizito Mihigo
    25 Jun 2025
    Kizito Mihigo and Victoire Ingabire both challenged Rwanda's foundational genocide narrative. He died in jail, and she is now in custody.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us