Mandela: the comedy show has begun

I mean, what is with all those Western media and government tributes to Mandela? Is this excess in emotional expression supposed to make us forget that the apartheid regime was sponsored and supported for decades by the "West" and that the "West" did not turn on the the apartheid regime until it could not longer survive, very much like how they turned against Mubarak after he was no longer in office. Who are you fooling? I came to the US in 1983, and the American liberal and conservative press was fiercely hostile to Mandela at the time.