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Mandela, Freedom Fighter or Terrorist?

Was Nelson Mandela a terrorist or a freedom fighter? Or other (please explain)


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He was a little of both. He certainly was not a completely non-violent man, so if that is the sort of person you admire he is not up there with Gandhi or MLK, who has been compared to. In the end though he believed his actions were justified, because after all he lived in a society where the white minority actively oppressed blacks and prevented them from having a political voice. He had no option to vote down Apartheid, the only options he had were 1) convince whites that the morality of the situation outweighs their self-interest and abolish it within their electoral system 2) go the Gandhi route and only use non-violent civil disobedience and 3) use violence. He did a combination of 2 and 3.

Should he have used violence? I'm not sure. I believe it is only justified if no other solutions are possible and you live under such repression that there is absolutely no democratic option to change things you do not like. Morally you cannot criticize Mandela and also say that the founding fathers of the USA were justified, because in the end they did the exact same thing. I myself, in spite of being a patriotic American, don't think revolution was necessarily the only solution at the time and I think had they failed we would probably be a commonwealth realm with self-government. Even so what happened happpened and I support my country.
In the same way I think Mandela could have theoretically ended Apartheid without any of the violence the way Gandhi drove the British out of India, either way we should just be glad it ended.




Great post.

You summed it all up well.
 
I use to read some of Nelson Mandela's columns he use to write and were published mostly in South African newspapers. I searched for the one Mandela wrote two or three years ago. But with Nelsons death, in the past couple of weeks there been so much posted on the internet, tens of thousands I can't find the one I was looking for.

But Mandela's column was about him addressing all of the violence and racism there is in South Africa today. More today than when he was released from prison in 1990. And Mandela admitted it.

But what I had a problem with was Mandela almost sounded like Obama. Instead of Mandela blaming the NAC government for what went wrong in South Africa, he blamed apartheid, like how Obama always blamed Bush for everything. A sign of a narcissist. Aparthied ended over twenty years ago !

Maybe if Mandela would have served two terms as President things would have been different today in South Africa ???

The problems in South Africa today aren't Mandela's fault but the NAC fault. If the NAC even moves a few inches to the left, South Africa will become another Zimbabwe.

But if I do find that column, I'll post it. Kinda enjoying reading all of the South Africa forums. They look at things differently.




South Africa has some problems now and it will likely have problems in the future, but it will never become another Zimbabwe and it can thank Mandela for that.
 
Before 1965 the vast majority of Americans be they Democrats or Republicans were nationalist. Patriotic Americans, America first.

Those who weren't nationalist in America were either Communist Party USA, Marxist, anarchist, the New Left or internationalist socialist.

Do you know who Francis Bellamy was ? He was a socialist. Was he an internationalist socialist or a nationalist socialist ?

He wrote the Pledge of Allegiance.

And before 1942 every morning all across America in every classroom this took place.





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I remember that. I was one of those patriotic kids.
 
In the light of Nelson Mandela's death, was Nelson Mandela a freedom fighter or a terrorist? Or "other" (please explain)?

Mandela fought against the WASP policies that repressed the poor minorities in South Africa. The USA needs someone like him to fight for poor minorities in this Nation. I do not mean ethnic minorities, even though many of the poor would be considered ethnic minorities. We need to follow up the Occupy movement with action, legal or subliminal.
 
Mandela fought against the WASP policies that repressed the poor minorities in South Africa. The USA needs someone like him to fight for poor minorities in this Nation. I do not mean ethnic minorities, even though many of the poor would be considered ethnic minorities. We need to follow up the Occupy movement with action, legal or subliminal.

I endited your post a bit.

Mandela fought against the WASP policies that repressed the poor majority in South Africa.

Black Africans were not a minority. They were the majority oppressed by the apartheid government.
 
He helped stop apartheid in South Africa and fought for the freedom of blacks in the country.

Now, his actions to reach those means may not have always been the pest and in some cases may have been classified as terrorism. I believe his group was recognized as a terrorist organization for some time.
 
anybody can claim or be named a freedom fighter, it is up to the people who are affected by the actions of the person to decide. In this case the people of South Africa have rallied around him and he unified a country. In the cases of other "freedom fighters" such as bin Laden, he was able to secure the blessings of few, but 99% of Islam did not feel the same way. That is the difference. While obviously not every South African loves Mandela, it is surely easier to find a Mandela lover than a bin Laden lover in their home territory.
The difference lies only in interpretation. Were numerical subscription the yardstick, freedom fighters could only warrant such a designation via global acclaim. By extension, Bin Laden couldn't be a terrorist since, as you say, he couldn't boast such widespread approval. To say nothing of so arbitrary a definition as popularity.
 
South Africa has some problems now and it will likely have problems in the future, but it will never become another Zimbabwe and it can thank Mandela for that.

That's what many credit Mandela for including Afrikaans.

But if a civil war would have broken out, Mandela probably would have found himself back in prison. The Soviet Union was no more so the ANC only had Cuba to look for with support and the Afrikaans controlled the most powerful military on the continent of Africa back then.

South Africa becoming another Zimbabwe ? I'm only going from what I hear South Africans saying, if the ANC moves any further to the left, South Africa will become another Zimbabwe. That hell hole is one real basket case.

Back in early 2001, before 9-11, the scuttlebutt was in the White House that regime change in Zimbabwe was on Bush's agenda. But 9-11 changed everything.

G.W. Bush had a hard-on for Africa, he did more for Africa than any other President. He also had a hard-on for Mexico. Strange guy, he must have partied heavy in Nuevo Laredo back during his cocain days. :lol:
 
Our founding fathers were men who fought for freedom for themselves, but not for the Black slaves that many of them owned.

I agree. Im just trying to show him that his logic is very flawed.
 
All terrorists are freedom fighters and all freedom fighters are terrorists -- it's two sides of the same coin, all dependent on your viewpoint.

What a truly ignorant statement.

The difference lies, not in the points of views of people who know absolutely nothing of the world, but in the techniques used.

Terrorists strike innocent civilians because they are civilians. Freedom fighters can involve themselves in non violent struggle, or choose means which attack military or governmental targets, in which case they are involved in guerilla war, not terrorism.
 
What a truly ignorant statement.

The difference lies, not in the points of views of people who know absolutely nothing of the world, but in the techniques used.

Terrorists strike innocent civilians because they are civilians. Freedom fighters can involve themselves in non violent struggle, or choose means which attack military or governmental targets, in which case they are involved in guerilla war, not terrorism.

But sometimes the government kills innocent civilians via flying robots, and sometimes the Taliban terrorist is actually just defending the village where his mom and wife live.

You're trying to draw a distinction where none exist. Everything is a point of view -- and the most evil, despicable, irredeemable men to you may be heroic martyrs and family men to others, while the institutions we reify and honour can appear to be mindless death machines to others.

Thus, I think, with very few exceptions, you must agree: In general, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Some of them use more noble and careful methods, and some of them are pragmatic bastards who will do anything to accomplish their goal. But don't insult me, yourself, or them by saying that somehow some of them are objectively evil, while others are not.
 
In the light of Nelson Mandela's death, was Nelson Mandela a freedom fighter or a terrorist? Or "other" (please explain)?

i dont know, he seemed to be a bit of both. And you know its all about perspective. I mean George Washington, Tomas Jefferson, Paul revere, all of them were technically terrorists but they are considered among Americas greatest hero's.
 
Transkei was a dictatorship ruled by a corrupt one party government, and was essentially a vassal of South Africa the entire time.

Still not part of South Africa. The corrupt party was run by Mandela's cousin until 1987. Bantu Holomisa ruler after 1987 was in fact another supporter of Mandela. Hell, he was elected to the ANC national executive committee when Transkei became part of South Africa in 1994.
 
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