The just war of Nelson Mandela
‘South Africa’s Gandhi’ believed that only armed struggle could end apartheid
December 5, the anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death, is an occasion to reflect on the life of the great anti-apartheid leader. Mandela retrospectives invariably compare him to Gandhi, Martin Luther King or both, placing Mandela not only in the pantheon of immortal fighters against injustice but also within the tradition of nonviolence.
However, doing so is actually a great disservice to Mandela, who rejected nonviolence as an unrealistic strategy in the South African context. There’s a tendency among liberals to equate nonviolence with moral righteousness, but by bowdlerizing Mandela’s story, well-meaning people give short shrift to the political genius he showed in responding to the peculiar brutality of the apartheid system.
Days after Mandela’s death in 2013, Stanford’s Martin Luther King Institute released a statement titled “Remembering Nelson Mandela” that contained surprisingly little about the man’s life. It began with “[W]e mourn the passing of Nelson Mandela, who has, along with Gandhi and King, symbolized the twentieth century freedom struggles that affected the lives of the majority of humanity.”
Gandhi demonstrated that nonviolent strategies could be used effectively to…
