Is Nelson Mandela Really All That?

[TedShatner10]

I wonder if we can discredit former South African leader Nelson Mandela Penn & Teller style and find out he is just another African tyrant cashing in on the retarded tribalism plaguing the continent, only that he had more charisma, popular support, and slick PR. However South Africa has always been something of basket case with millions of blacks brutalized and exploited by a viciously racist authoritarian white regime, who were in the minority, so a situation like that was bound to end badly for most.

Fair play to Mandela, to be an imprisoned terrorist who manages to take over the country with seemingly no bloodshed and on public good will instead of a military junta, is still a respectible achievement. But what of his 1960s terrorist career and tenure as President? The modus operendi of his organization in getting rid of opposition was the charming technique of putting a rubber tyre around a victim's neck (with fuel sloshing around) and catching it alight. And judging from what I've seen in Louis Theroux Law and Disorder in Johannesburg it seems like life for the average South African has really not improved and most likely gotten worse, thousands of white famers have been brutally murdered in their homes, while the current regime carrying on from a retired Mandela seems to be willfully ignoring the giant elephant in the room that is Robert Mugabe.

 

[An Officer]

If you base your world view on that of Louis Theroux, you're going to have problems.

 

[Roger Wilco]

What exactly is it you're accusing Mandela of - being an incompetent politician, being a murderer, or what?
I don't think you can call him a tyrant, he wasn't in power all that long (and democratically elected), and before that he was in prison for 30 years.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

What exactly is it you're accusing Mandela of - being an incompetent politician, being a murderer, or what?
I don't think you can call him a tyrant, he wasn't in power all that long, and before that he was in prison for 30 years.

A terrorist by the looks of it.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Well, he and his military wing of the ANC were declared terrorists by a government who massacred 69 peaceful protesters (and wounded 180 - most of the dead and wounded were shot in the back as they ran away) in Sharpeville in 1960, the very incident that gave birth to what had up until then had been a mostly peaceful movement except for some rioting which was incited by both sides. So it's kind of hard to say the government were holding the moral high ground on the terrorism issue. Which of course can be applied to a lot of situations outside of South Africa as well.

Most of the bombings that Mandela directly participated in were acts of sabotage aimed at the white dominated government and infrastructure, and were planned during off hours to avoid casualties. While the group did become much more violent and often targeted civilians specifically afterwards, I don't know how much of that we can lay at Mandela's feet since he was in prison. Likewise, in total the later bombings probably killed fewer civilians than the shootings at Sharpeville did (not that that makes them okay). Mandela condemned attempts at denying those terrorist actions during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Considering some of the horrific actions taken by the South African government at the time, I'm not sure how Mandela can be considered any more or less of a terrorist than the rest of them. It was a horrible situation where they turned to violence as a means to an end out of desperation when peaceful protests had resulted in mass murder. Does it make specifically targeting civilians right? No, but then the government was specifically targeting civilians too.

And the targeting of civilians doesn't end in South Africa by any means. A lot of the past heroes and political figures that we praise in modern society might be judged far more harshly if we considered targeting civilians the main deciding factor on what makes one a terrorist.

I think we have to look at what Mandela has done since then and what he means to his people. He took something terrible and did something good with it, and he never lost sight of the human cost of war, whereas a true terrorist doesn't really give a damn about who he has to kill or exploit to achieve his goals.

 

[FordSVT]

Mandela didn't do anything differently than all the gun-toting righties on this board claim they'd do with their guns to their own government if it was turned against them. Quite the case of "terrorists are people without what we would consider to be a just or rational cause".

The freedom fighter/terrorist dilemma.

Mandela has done much good for the people of SA, and in more recent interviews he clearly expressed his dismay at the way the leadership of South Africa and other African countries have failed to grab the bull by the horns and improve the lives of Africans. The entire system is corrupt but I don't think that's necessarily Mandela's fault. He's not a god, he can make people vote a certain way or nominate whomever he wants to office. It's amazing that he did what he did during his time, and now his time has passed. But he's no hate-mongering power mad loony if that's what the OP is getting at.

 

[Davros]

What exactly is it you're accusing Mandela of - being an incompetent politician, being a murderer, or what?
I don't think you can call him a tyrant, he wasn't in power all that long, and before that he was in prison for 30 years.

A terrorist by the looks of it.

Not by any rational standards.

 

[Dayton3]

Nelson Mandela led South Africa in a far more reasonable and moderate manner than I would ever have expected.

He had plenty of reasons for a campaign of revenge.

 

[TedShatner10]

The entire system is corrupt but I don't think that's necessarily Mandela's fault. He's not a god, he can make people vote a certain way or nominate whomever he wants to office. It's amazing that he did what he did during his time, and now his time has passed. But he's no hate-mongering power mad loony if that's what the OP is getting at.

I do not think he was necessarily a power mad loony, since his tenure as President was relatively brief and he was a factor in South Africa not spiriling into a proper civil war more than a decade ago, but more the organization he was part of that is the real problem in this situation. The Apartheid regime were obviously not goody two shoes, if they had their glothes off and treated most the population worse than second class citizens the resistance groups would be violent. The ANC was involved in extensive gang warfare against other similar liberation groups in the 1980s, their biggest one being the Inkatha Freedom Party.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I do not think he was necessarily a power mad loony, since his tenure as President was relatively brief and he was a factor in South Africa not spiriling into a proper civil war more than a decade ago, but more the organization he was part of that is the real problem in this situation. The Apartheid regime were obviously not goody two shoes, if they had their glothes off and treated most the population worse than second class citizens the resistance groups would be violent. The ANC was involved in extensive gang warfare against other similar liberation groups in the 1980s, their biggest one being the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Yes, but again, he was already in prison for 20 years by then, and completely isolated from that organization. Why are you holding him responsible for the nature of the organization after he was no longer the commander of the ANC's military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe?

You're stretching.