They know that their election chances would be reduced dramatically if all elections were on the up-and-up

Unfortunately, most of them (not all of them, surprisingly, but still most of them) lack the critical thinking skills to discover that Nelson Mandela was very much a far cry from the legendary civil rights hero the world makes him out to be in the first place.

I agree. I used to hear about what a “great and noble” man he was. I believed it when I first heard about him when I.was a kid and hadn’t read anything about who he really was yet. The whole “free Nelson Mandela” campaign by the American left was all over the place back then. It didn’t take long to learn that he was a close ally and proxy of the Soviet communists and of Fidel Castro and all of the other leftists of the time. Before he was (rightfully) put in prison for legitimate crimes. His wife, Winnie, was even worse.