[sandisk5]

> Of course we don't call the Apartheid government "terrorists" for these crimes.

Almost everyone agrees that the Apartheid government was horrible. Almost no one holds them up as a positive example.

Conversely, almost everyone holds Mandela and his terrorist organization up as an example and as a hero despite them intentionally setting off bombs in civilian locations like shopping malls and restaurants.

[Udik]

Terrorism is sometimes the only weapon of those who fight against a much more powerful enemy. This doesn't mean that all terrorism is justifiable, but arresting your thought at words such as "terrorist" or "dictatorship" or "democracy" is silly. These are just arbitrary labels.

[meowface]

Ruthless, arbitrary slaughter of innocent civilians en masse is never justified, even if you are being oppressed.

[Udik]

No? Ruthless and arbitrary slaughter of civilians is instead justified by the presence of a military objective spatially located in the vicinity? The result is always the same: in order to obtain some result, you knowingly sacrifice civilians. Be the result destroying infrastructure, forcing a reaction, or producing a deterrence. Some armies have the means to hit the best military objectives directly, others have to rely on indirect effects. Would you qualify the Dresden bombings as military acts or terrorism? Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Somebody said "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy". The relation between war and terrorism is approximately the same.

[soneca]

From the biographies I read, they never put bombs in public, civilian locations. Only in strategic industrial/infrastructure locations, making sure there was not a person in place.

But, of course I read that in biased biographies. Do you have source that a person was killed by these attacks?

[sandisk5]

I'm no expert. Mandela cofounded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe#Bombings has a list of atrocities committed by them. During most of them Mandela was in prison I believe. I don't know about his influence over the organization during that time or if he condemned these attacks, I'd guess he didn't but am happy to be proven wrong.

"five civilians were killed and 40 were injured when MK cadre Andrew Sibusiso Zondo detonated an explosive in a rubbish bin at a shopping centre shortly before Christmas."

"a bomb was detonated in a bar, killing three civilians and injuring 69"

" terror campaign continued with attacks on a series of soft targets, including a bank in Roodepoort in 1988, in which four civilians were killed and 18 injured. Also in 1988, a bomb outside a magistrate's court killed three. At the Ellis Park rugby stadium in Johannesburg, a car bomb killed two and injured 37 civilians. A multitude[14] of bombs at restaurants and fast food outlets, including Wimpy Bars,[15] and supermarkets occurred during the late 1980s, killing and wounding many people."

[viiaezumu]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Street_bombing