Seriously. In terms of United States law. He needs ‘special permission’ when he travels stateside. That also counts for all former prisoners from the African National Congress.
Not for the Cabinet ministers or members of the Apartheid regime’s security council or its death squads. I forgot that was a ‘democratic’ government.
There are now finally — 18 years after Mandela came out of prison, and 13 years since he became South Africa’s first democratic President — attempts through legislation tabled in the US Congress to ‘fix the problem.’
See here.
I am not surprised: the US was a staunch ally of the previous racist South African government (Ronald Reagan, President from 1980 to 1991, once made clear why he supported Apartheid: “[South Africa is] a country that, strategically, is essential to the free world in its production of minerals.”) and current US Vice President Dick Cheney is infamous for his countless resolutions in Congress to declare Mandela a terrorist ‘who deserved to be jailed.’ .
Yeah. I remember Reagan’s and then Cheney’s insistence on quiet diplomacy, or whatever other name they used in those days.