Nelson Mandela and Violence

If there's anything reactionaries love to do, it's eulogizing the "nonviolence" of leaders who led liberation struggles. One of the most common criticisms of Nelson Mandela, the ANC, and the anti-Apartheid struggle was their openness to violent tactics. From a 1990 New York Times opinion piece, here is one such instance of this inane criticism:

Understandably, Americans are eager to hear Mr. Mandela's opinions delivered in person, after his release from 27 years of imprisonment. But he, in turn, needs to answer one simple question: Why won't he and the A.N.C. renounce violence?

While armed resistance is justified in certain circumstances, growing violence throughout South Africa now threatens the process of peaceful reform. Clearly, Mr. Mandela's stature should now be used to preach a message of nonviolence and civil disobedience.

(If really want to know what I'm talking about, go to National Review and read the comments on an article about Mandela, if you haven't eaten lately.)

Now, I am not generally in favor of violence. As I see it, at least 95% percent of violence (such as wars between states, in general) is both evil and pointless, something in which no decent person should participate. But what in particular makes a struggle like the anti-Apartheid struggle the object of this criticism? Surely it isn't the innocence or pacifism of the South African government during that era (that government wasn't content to brutalize its own citizens, but engaged in several neo-colonial wars throughout Southern Africa).

So why does Nelson Mandela of all people turn almost everyone into a pacifist? There are people who didn't blink during the shock-and-awe bombing of Baghdad, who would love to "bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran," who are utter moral purists in the case of the anti-Apartheid struggle. Similarly, opinions about the Haitian Revolution or the French Revolution go one way, while (in the US, at least) the American Revolution and the Mexican-American war are generally seen as heroic endeavors, even if we wouldn't do it that way now.

For one thing, there is a strong ideology that supports violence by the state (preferably by one's own state), while abhorring violence by non-state actors as chaotic and terroristic. There is likely also a deeply ingrained racist tendency to view violence by black people as inherently morally suspect (so one hears a great deal about "atrocities" committed by the Haitian revolutionaries, but little about the conditions under which Haitian slaves had lived). And one hears little from critics of Mandela or the ANC about what exactly Apartheid was or who supported it and why.

In any case, if you're wondering why Mandela turned to a such a conciliatory position after the ANC came to power, think about who had the guns at the time. Not black South Africans. The fact that white supremacists often have no qualms about using violence, either legally or nonlegally, has been a defining factor in South African life since the creation of Apartheid in the 1940s.