Well, it turns out British Prime Minister David Cameron didn't want to 'Hang Mandela' after all- he did take a 'dodgy' trade trip to South Africa in 1989 but apparently apologized for his position on sanctions against the apartheid regime in 2006. The supposed controversy gobbling up the Interwebs in the wake of Mandela's passing (especially across the Pond but there was the occasional pissing match over here too about what someone said/did way back in the 80s and that tiresome question over Mandela's status as a 'possible terrorist') has now apparently been put to rest but should underline two important things that everybody, regardless of their political leanings should keep in mind when people die:
First of all, don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Second of all, someone's dead. Try not to have a party about it and definitely don't try and score political points off of a dead person. In football (or American handegg, depending on what side of the ocean you're on reading this) that would get you a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct. While I don't have handy yellow flags, I will judge you for it and instantly label you a massive tool. (Because it's impolite to speak ill of the dead and/or score political points off of them, that's why.)
But that got me thinking... how do you define a 'terrorist?' Why are there people out there convinced that Mandela was a terrorist? Naturally, I started digging on Wikipedia and found out the following: In the wake of the Sharpeville Massacre many in the ANC (including Mandela) came to the conclusion that if their peaceful protests were going to be met with force by the Apartheid Government then violence was inevitable and so they founded a militant wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe to carry out guerilla attacks and acts of sabotage against the government until their demands for political change were met.
I haven't yet found anything that indicates Mandela took a direct part in the militant wing's activities, although he was charged along with ten other ANC leaders in the Rivonia Trial because of his connection with the militant wing he wasn't charged with any specific act of violence- more conspiracy to undermine/commit sedition against the Apartheid Government type of things. Where I think people on the right got a little hysterical back in the day was with the connections to the South African Communist Party.
It's very easy for me to sit here, in 2013 and judge the activities and the policies of various Cold War governments a bit harshly. I didn't live through it, I wasn't there and in hindsight, everything is 20/20. But there is a cost to be paid for the obsessions of the past... the fact remains that back in the day any association with the Communist Party of any kind was enough to get you labeled a terrorist or worst. Anyone opposed to communism, however odious, could find friends in the West and that is something that frustrates me to this day- when our government had to stand by regimes like the apartheid regime in the name of fighting communism, then did we really know who are friends were? Do we know?
The obsessions of the past can exact a heavy price from us in the complexities of the present. Do I think Mandela was a terrorist? No, I don't. The calculation that the ANC came to in the wake of Sharpeville might have been an extreme one but it was one that I don't find particularly illogical, given the circumstances at the time. If the West was unwilling to intervene or impose sanctions and every effort at peaceful protest was met with violence, what then were they supposed to do?
I expect the debates on that particular question to continue for decades as it promises to be a crucial part of shaping Mandela's legacy for the history books.
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