Stephen Harper, Nelson Mandela and whitewashing the past

[JohnyCanuck]

By Murray Dobbin

Of all the hypocrisies revealed by Stephen Harper, perhaps none are so morally offensive as his sudden, solemn respect for Nelson Mandela. We will never know how Harper would reconcile his past attitudes towards apartheid with his trip to South Africa to honour the iconic statesman at his memorial.

In 1989 Harper was a member of the Northern Foundation (NF) about the same time that he became policy chief of the Reform Party. The exclusive mandate of the NF was to counter the serious efforts of the Canadian government of Brian Mulroney to pressure the South African government to release Nelson Mandela from prison and to end apartheid.

The membership of the NF read like a who's who of the far right in Canada. Many, if not all, of its members were also members of the Reform Party. Harper told Trevor Harrison, the author of a book on the Reform Party (Of Passionate Intensity) that he had been a member "for a short time" but was kicked out because he was "not right-wing enough." Yet there was no doubt about what the organization stood for when he joined. And by his own account he didn't leave voluntarily.

The NF's magazine was explicitly pro-apartheid (as well as anti-gay, and anti-French language rights). It provided free advertising to many right-wing groups including the pro-apartheid magazine The Phoenix and the Reform Party which apparently didn't object to being promoted by a gang of racists.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/12/stephen-harper-nelson-mandela-and-whitewashing-past