As my friend Bill Katz wrote, let's remember the real Mandela:

"His fight against apartheid, which included years in prison, was not joined by a similar fight to uplift South Africa once it was free.  The country is a mess.  And Mandela had a casualness about dictatorial regimes, like Gaddafi's Libya, that remains troubling.  But political correctness will shove these concerns aside."

We remember Mandela as a man who stood up to apartheid, a noble cause.    

Mandela did lose his freedom and I am not defending the way that he was treated, especially in his early days.  But, he was released.   

We will also remember him as a man who praised dictators like Gaddafi and Castro, or not very noble causes.

This is what he said when he visited Cuba:

"Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela developed such a close relationship that it's impossible to forget when speaking about the African leader in Latin America.

The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 inspired a young Mandela.

Later in life,Mandela credited Cuba's military support to Angola in the 1970s and 1980s with playing a role in debilitating South Africa's government enough to result in the legalization of his party, the African National Congress, in 1990."

Some of us just don't understand how Mandela could be such a fan of Castro's Cuba or embrace a murderer like Ghadaffi.

Also, Cuban troops in Africa were doing the work of the old Soviet Union.  They weren't fighting for democracy or freedom.  In fact, the Kremlin subsidized the Castro regime and got paid back by Cuban troops fighting these wars in Africa.  Again, there was nothing democratic about Cuban troops fighting in Africa.  The USSR via Cuban troops was not interested in creating democracies in Africa.They were looking for communist satellite states.

RIP Nelson Mandela. Your silence about black dissidents in Cuba was very troubling.

P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.