It is no accident that when Nelson Mandela declared his opposition to lawsuits for reparations for the victims of apartheid he did it in the company of Nicky Oppenheimer speaking for De Beers Diamond Mines. So we know clearly, if we had any doubts, that he is on the side of the corporations and not on the side of the workers - many of whom suffered terribly at the hands of the corporation, even while it was making millions. A diamond may be forever, but the lives of the miners was hard, and for many of them unpardonably brief.

Nor is a conjunction with Rhodes House and Rhodes Scholarships inappropriate; Cecil Rhodes made his millions out of Africa, which made possible the many Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University which helped further the imperial project in South Africa and (of course) Rhodesia - as Zimbabwe was once known. (The links between the Oppenheimers and the equally amoral Anglo-American Corporation need surely not be enumerated).

So now we may be fated to see the names of Mandela and Rhodes linked in Mandela-Rhodes Scholarships. And this linking with a ruthless robber-baron may prove not inappropriate in future history, when the Mandela statue is towering over Algoa Bay where I grew up and engaged in resistance with oppression.

An additional thought about timing: South Africa is about to engage in a momentous debate about reparations for the victims of apartheid; that the Mandela denunciation of lawsuits for reparations should come on the eve of a reparations conference exhibits a cynicism worthy of the old robber-baron who dreamed of a British Empire from "Cape to Cairo"!

This conference, incidentally came as the end product of a long and complicated process in which the South African Council of Churches had a curious difficulty in declaring in own position and in finding a convenient date for such a conference - with those who called for a conference such as Jubilee South Africa and Khulumani - finding themselves under snide attack from Rev. Frank Chikane, from the office of President Thabo Mbeki no less, for being "special interest" groups who were not interested in the hardships of the victims of Apartheid.