Mandela: Death of a Politician
December 27, 2013  16:09
Does it matter that Nelson Mandela was a communist who believed in the liberating virtue of firearms and explosives? It matters that he became a communist in 1960, in the aftermath of Sharpeville, where 69 protesters were shot dead by the South African police.

It also matters that the SACP was still in 1960 the organisational and political spine of the ANC, which was founded in 1912 as a party of notables rather than a fighting force.

Finally, it matters that Mandela saw the use of or abstention from armed insurrection as, in his own words, 'not a moral principle but a strategy, as there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon'.

-- That's Stephen W. Smith on the great Nelson Mandela. Read
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