[puller]

To be fair, he did found the armed wing of the ANC, was offered a release from prison conditional on renouncing violence which he refused to do, and afterward his group went on to carry out a number of IRA-style bombings.

The apartheid regime might have justified extreme measures that killed civilians, but his hands are not as clean as you would imagine from the hagiography.

We don't glorify Gerry Adams in this way and give him Nobel prizes, although he did contribute a lot to the peace process in Ireland.

[leoc]

The analogy between Adams and the IRA and Mandela and the ANC is seriously inapt. To begin with, the IRA's objective was not civil rights for Northern Ireland's Catholic/Nationalist minority. The Provisional Sinn Féin/Provisional IRA hydra always made it absolutely clear that their goal was the establishment of "a thirty-two county socialist republic". That means that they were seeking to impose, by force, a single all-Ireland state on the Protestant/Unionist majority of Northern Ireland against its wishes. This is a straightforward small-n nationalist objective, not a democratic or ("clasically") liberal or humanitarian one. Secondly, and secondarily, even at their worst the civil disabilities imposed on Northern Ireland's Catholic/Nationalist minority (though real and serious) were not really comparable with what South Africa's black majority was made to suffer. And when those disabilities were corrected (and when the UK government began massively and even-handedly subsidising the whole Northern Ireland economy, to keep both Catholics and Protestants in jobs and forestall a collapse of the NI economy brought on by the IRA's campaign) it made not a blind bit of difference to the IRA, because, once again, Northern Ireland Catholics/Nationalists enjoying political and personal freedom within the UK was contrary to their objective. Finally, when the population of Northern Ireland participated in largely free and fair elections to the UK parliament, not only most Northern Ireland voters overall, but most voters from the Catholic/Nationalist community in Northern Ireland consistently rejected the IRA's campaign by voting for politicians who opposed it and rejecting the IRA's candidates (running under its Sinn Féin political wing). They had no mandate from anyone.

The "peace process" basically consisted of SF/IRA giving up and accepting the political arrangement which they had been violently opposing for decades, in exchange for goodies for themselves. As such it's a bit much to laud Adams for his role in it, beyond noting his success in persuading his fellow desperadoes to accept the goodies instead of continuing their deeply beloved war. (Though it turns out his success at this was pretty partial too.) Nonetheless if you don't think Adams has been glorified you're quite mistaken. As soon as the "peace process" began Adams (and Martin McGuinness, the Tweedledum to his Tweedledee) were the beneficiaries of an almost full-spectrum political and media bulldozing campaign in the Republic of Ireland, the UK and worldwide in support of the peace process and its heroes and against any hard questions. You wouldn't believe some of the soft-focused fawning and cooing Adams has received from mainstream sources, if you somehow haven't seen it yourself already.

[Brakenshire]

It's also worth saying that the IRA deliberately targeted civilians, which as far as I know was not the case with Mandela.

[moolriaz]

Apartheid was a unique situation. Comparing it to Ireland is ridiculous, especially when you lack the perspective of what South Africa is actually like. Mandela averted a civil war - a real fear for many that were preparing to flee from the country. You make it seem like Mandela was ordering bombings from his cell.

[kops]

> To be fair, he did found the armed wing of the ANC, was offered a release from prison conditional on renouncing violence which he refused to do, and afterward his group went on to carry out a number of IRA-style bombings.

So he didn't turn out to be a meek cow...that is your complaint?

[rhizome]

The hagiography is wrong. It's only in the last 20 years that people have tried to make him into a Ghandi.

[moolriaz]

Mandela is absolutely distinct from Ghandi.

While Ghandi lived in South Africa, he wrote racist slander towards black (African) people, referring to them as 'kaffirs' (the N word equivalent in SA). Here's a quote:

"Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness."

Ghandi too was not perfect, and also experienced Apartheid (most notably when he was kicked off a train in Pietermaritzburg), and demonstrated against it in SA. Though I do not think he believed in equality for Indians with Blacks.

[wavefunction]

I will have to check (I think it is found in "Village Swaraj" but it may be "All Men are Brothers" which would make more sense thematically) but Ghandi specifically talks about his experiences in South Africa and how it finally opened his eyes towards his own prejudices.

He writes about the experience in Pietermaritzburg and how it took this experience to realize that all men are brothers and deserving of equality. This is not to say the guy was a saint, but to mention that I believe he came around.