Breaking news: the Spice Girls will be appearing as guest singers at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebrations in London. Wow, what an honour! The politically correct British thought police need not worry; I come to praise Mandela, not to bury him.

The apartheid regime sentenced Mandela to 26 years in jail. When released, he displayed remarkable magnanimity, even sharing a convivial cup of tea with arch foe, the "big crocodile", PW Botha. It's one thing to advocate reconciliation but to actually sup with the person who - if not put you in jail exactly, then certainly kept you there - is something else. Mandela also met the widow of Hendrik Verwoerd, who did indeed put him on Robben Island. Even Eugene Terreblanche, neo-Nazi leader of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement who was jailed for the attempted murder of a black employee, praised him as a "good Xhosa". Doubtless, in a poll of - the regrettably few - finer African leaders, Mandela would come top.

What irks me, however, is the almost blind de rigeur adoration of this man whose statue now stands in London's Parliament Square. Even Conservative leader David Cameron has stated that his party's historic definition of Mandela as a "terrorist" was mistaken. Now everyone who is anyone, and even anyone who is no one, makes the obligatory genuflection to Mandela. Pop stars who probably couldn't place South Africa on the map, Hollywood stars like Charlize Theron - who (coincidentally) left the country of her birth in the early 1990s around the time that white rule was ending - as well as American presidents and an assortment of British dignitaries brainwashed into believing that Mandela is a paragon of virtue. The British masses, people whose ignorance on South Africa is often mind-boggling, also lend unquestioning support. I remember one person saying to me in all seriousness: "Prison really works. Look at Mandela. He did bad fings (sic), served his time and then went on to become president. He really reformed."

The liberal intelligentsia appear to believe that Mandela was clearly infallible. Yet history tells us a different story. Mandela headed the African National Congress, a communist political party. Yet when he came to power he suddenly praised privatisation as the "fundamental policy of this government", contradicting everything he espoused before 1994. Mandela also befriended several dubious leaders who, in turn, were good chums with despots, notably Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi, erstwhile IRA supporter and international terrorist number one.

When Ugandan president Idi Amin, cannibal, mass murderer and laughing sadist, was ousted in 1979, who despatched troops to shore him up? That's right, the good colonel. And yet Mandela counted Gadaffi as a friend! Standing next to president Bill Clinton in 1998, Mandela told the press that critics of his friendship with Gadaffi could "go jump into the lake". Was Mandela saying that Gadaffi could be forgiven all his other crimes just because he supported the anti-apartheid struggle? Is it alright to be a megalomaniac dictator just as long as one isn't racist? That seemed to be Mandela's credo. Yasser Arafat was also a good friend - was this international terrorist the kind of "freedom fighter" Mandela really admired? Another ally was president Suharto, the utterly corrupt leader of Indonesia. Surely Mandela knew of Suharto's "faults" when he went there and offered to sell him arms. Of course he did! But, surprise, surprise, business interests predominated. As he told left-wing commentator John Pilger in 1999: The ANC was willing to "do business with any regime regardless of its internal policies". Even Pilger criticised him for the incredible irony and double standard implicit in that statement, the hypocrisy of which was clearly lost on Mandela.

I'm not saying that Mandela is a bad man, merely that he is a mere mortal - a normal politician acting according to realpolitik - who should be treated as such. So why the deification? Is it that Britain, as a former imperialist power, feels guilty about its colonial role in South Africa? To assuage their guilt London is now landed with a permanent memorial to Mandela the Machiavellian. Ironically, his statue is near that of Winston Churchill, a truly great British leader. It's just another example of the madness of modern Britain.