Why is Former South African President, Freedom Fighter Nelson Mandela Still on a U.S. Terrorist Black List?

So, apartheid raged in South Africa for eons and who gets penalized overseas? Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress, or ANC. U.S. legislators debated legislation that would remove the former South African president and his party from an apartheid-era US terrorist blacklist. I cannot believe that it has taken the U.S. government this long to remove this man, who still needs a visa waiver to come to the United States, from such a list. Several members of the House of Representatives immediately expressed support for a bill aimed at removing from any US databases "any notation that would characterize the ANC and its leaders as terrorists."

Geez, I wonder why nobody else bothered to do anything about this. Oh, I am sorry, this lackadaisical attitude of the powers that be is why we are still "searching" for Osama Bin Laden after all these years. This attitude is why we can't fix the problems in Louisiana in the aftermath of Katrina. I will give a great deal of credit to Howard Berman, the California Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who sponsored the bill. Let me add, that the US State Department strongly supports this action.
Barbara Lee, another California Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, said she is "especially pleased we are taking this important step to finally right this inexcusable wrong."Lee and others said the legislation introduced during the 1980s while Ronald Reagan was president is anachronistic and wrongfully labels as terrorists men and women who are heroes and freedom fighters.
Lee recalled that the ANC could travel to United Nations headquarters in New York but not to Washington DC or other parts of the United States. I will echo this statement that "it has been 18 years since Nelson Mandela was released from prison, 14 years since he was elected president of South Africa, and this year, he will turn 90 years old," Lee said. Yet, even though he is "a hero" of the anti-apartheid movement who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and who served as his country's president, Mandela must still apply for a visa waiver just to visit the United States, she said. "This is just plain wrong," Lee added. You are damn right that it is just plain wrong. But as I said before, there is something greater at work here. Didn't Yasser Arafat visit Washington D.C. on many occasions? Didn't Gerry Adams from Sinn Fein visit Washington D.C. and even gave talks in New York City? This is clearly a double standard and hypocrisy at the highest levels. Was the late Willem De Klerk, former president of South African allowed to come to the USA and Washington D.C. as well?
This is clearly an insult to a man that fought for racial equality and justice in his country. Nelson Mandela walks among the greatest minds of all times and the American government should treat him as such. He certainly should not be in the same boat as a terrorist such as Osama Bin Laden.
He was a freedom fighter and it is high time that the stigma of terroristic behavior be removed from him and his organization.
Mirroring the legislation sponsored by Congressman Berman, Senator John Kerry, a former Democratic presidential candidate, introduced similar legislation in the Senate, his office said.
"The idea that he'd be on our government's terror watch list is deplorable. No bureaucratic snafu can excuse this international embarrassment, and we need to fix this policy now," Kerry was quoted by his office as saying. Last month US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged a Senate committee to remove the restrictions on the ANC. She said "it is really a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela."
This is a real shame and it is deplorable that after all these years, Nelson Mandela's name is still on a terror watch list, while the real terrorists from South African, who terrorized and murdered scores of innocent black people, were not given such treatment. I don't want to make this a racial issue, but I can only come to the conclusion that race has played an issue in this miscarriage of justice and respect for such a great man. Come on America, it is time to do better than that. Just my thoughts, you be the judge....