[moolriaz]

That's a bit condescending. Terrorism doesn't have an accepted definition, and that definitely isn't my definition of terrorism, nor many others. Perhaps people living in America are more inclined to your definition.

I believe that terrorism is defined by the desire to cause mass fear in the general populace by intentionally targeting innocent people, to send across some political message in whichever guise. 9/11 was a terrorist attack.

The Spear of the Nation targeted infrastructure of the Apartheid regime, and the policies of equality upheld by the ANC and Nelson Mandela were widely supported by both white and non-white people in South Africa. I do not think these actions were aimed at provoking mass fear or lobbying an ideal not commonly accepted in South Africa.

This period is often referred to as a revolution, and successful revolutionaries are not historically known as 'terrorists'. In the Anglo-Boer war a similar tactic was employed by the Boers to great effect, but I have never heard of anyone referring to their actions during this war as acts of terrorism. They fought against an act of war initiated by the British, the same way that the ANC fought against acts of violence by the ruling regime, except the ANC were severely under resourced.

Again, the spear of the nation may have done this. This doesn't make Nelson Mandela a terrorist. If he armed a bomb, killed someone, held someone hostage for international attention, I would be far more inclined to accept your definition, as with others.

Given that even the Iron Lady apologised for calling Mandela a terrorist, I'd say the commonly accepted belief is that he is and was not a terrorist.

[pessimizer]

>Terrorism doesn't have an accepted definition,

Then it's going to be very difficult to make an argument that Mandela was not a terrorist.

>In the Anglo-Boer war a similar tactic was employed by the Boers to great effect, but I have never heard of anyone referring to their actions during this war as acts of terrorism.

The first hit I get for "Boer terrorism" is: http://www.angloboerwar.com/books/78-stevens-the-complete-hi...

( https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=Boer+terrorism )

Edit:

Sorry about going on about this, but I think that saying people are not terrorists because we agree with them is closely related to saying that people are terrorists because we don't agree with them. If "terrorism" has a meaning, the question of whether Mandela was a terrorist should be answered based on that meaning. If what we really mean to say is that we think Mandela was a great man who improved the lives of millions, we can just say that instead of arguing or insulting each other over semantics.

[moolriaz]

The connotations associated with terrorism are simply too strong to associate with Mandela. People will take great offence at this, no matter what pedantic definition you want to use for it. Regardless, your definition still doesn't account for the fact that Nelson Mandela did not personally do any of these things, or intentionally target innocents.

[peterashford]

Its clear to me at least that any definition of "terrorism" must include the concept of inducing fear in the general populace by means of acts of violence on that population. That's also clearly NOT what Mandela did.

[dragonwriter]

> This period is often referred to as a revolution, and successful revolutionaries are not historically known as 'terrorists'.

Well, except that the term "Terror" as a political act and "Terrorists" for those who practiced it -- well, except in French, not English -- was coined to refer to a particular set of successful (to that point) revolutionaries and their actions (and embraced by them.)