…and then there was the time Nelson Mandela met Golgo 13.

The world lost a great man yesterday with the passing of Nelson Mandela.  Imprisoned for 27 years in the cause of freeing his people, released to see it happen and be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and then going on to unify his country as president.  He was a man who changed the world and will rightly be lionized for it.  His status and fame, however, also meant that he was fair game for anyone to use in their stories if they so chose.  One of the people who did was Takao Saito — or someone from his studio Saito Pro — which led to an episode of the manga where Golgo 13 (a.k.a. Duke Togo) arrives in South Africa and we find out the secret history between these two men.  It’s probably not the best story to use in order to honor the African leader, but I’m willing to bet that there are a lot of people out there who have no idea that it even exists.  Time to fix that.

Originally published as the title story in vol. 3 of Viz’s thirteen-volume “Golgo 13” run, “Power to the People” begins with Togo arriving in a South African airport and promptly being taken in by security after the device he tried to pass off as a blast drill was revealed to be a submachine gun.  After being whipped by security and offering a few choice words to show where he stands on racial politics in the region, he escapes and after beating up some guys in a bar off-panel soon finds his way into a white military group with designs on overthrowing the government.  It’s one man against an army and a plan that he doesn’t fully grasp yet, but in Togo’s world that’s just called “Thursday.”

Where does Mandela fit into all of this?  We initially see him meeting Togo on the island where the leader was imprisoned for a good portion of his life.  Mandela is aware of the constant threat of civil war this early into his tenure as president — the story takes place in 1994 — and fears that the overt use of military force to quell this threat will only fan its flames.  It initially looks like Togo is brought in because he’s the best there is at what he does, but we find out later that he had met the leader while he was imprisoned.  Seeing this new prisoner brought in, Mandela tells him of the one-in-a-million chance to escape the island as he looks like he might be able to handle it.  Soon after, the warden is killed and Togo has escaped.

Inserting Golgo 13 into Mandela’s history like this may seem ridiculous, implausible, or even a little bit disrespectful if you only take it in the context I’ve described.  Now, if you’ve read just about all of the “Golgo 13” manga published in English as I have it’s basically a non-issue.  This is a series that has always thrived on incorporating real-world events and characters into its stories.  In the Viz run alone you have Togo going into Iraq to take out a superweapon on behalf of the Clinton White House, and the revelation that he was the real “hanging chad” in the 2000 presidential election.  The series is still running in Japan and if they haven’t gotten around to doing stories featuring Edward Snowden or our recent government shutdown, then I’m certain they’re on the “to do” list.  Mandela’s appearance here is really just part of a grand tradition in this title.

But what about his actions in the story itself?  Mandela is currently being eulogized as “the last pure hero,” as someone whose life hasn’t been marred by scandal or personal indiscretion.  Here, the story shows him as a man willing to get his hands dirty by using a hired killer to head off the potential collapse of his country.  There is some ambiguity at the end as it’s insinuated that Togo made one final non-contracted kill to keep Mandela clear of the blowback from one of his political and personal friends who was also part of the plot.  After some rationalization, this leads the man to silently thank the killer for his work.

That last bit grates on the nerves as its sentimentality clashes with the tone of the series, while justifying Mandela’s moral compromise in the story just feels wrong right now.  Yet that may not be the case a few years from now.  Time and time again it has been shown that our great leaders have had to make dubious choices and sometimes do bad things in the name of the greater good.  Much as the media would like to think otherwise about Mandela right now, I’m willing to bet that once the dust has settled here and people start looking into his post-prison and presidential life more objectively we’ll find out that he faced hard choices like he did in the story here.  Not exactly like this one, even at its most political “Golgo 13” has always been very escapist in nature.  As entertaining as it can be, I wouldn’t put any of the stories I’ve read featuring the character up as realistic takes on any of the subject matter they cover.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and history will show that Mandela’s leadership was morally bulletproof.  I sincerely doubt it, but it could happen.  If so, then it’ll just add one more bit of curiosity, and maybe even some infamy, to this story.  It may have been intended as more of the politically-grounded escapism the series likes to traffic in, but for the moment this “Golgo 13” story gets to be a little more than that.  Certainly not the best way to celebrate Mandela’s life, yet it’ll make you think about it.