Tikkun's Contributing Editor Stephen Zunes shows why non-violence became so significant in the struggle for liberation in South Africa.
Mandela’s utilitarianism and the struggle for liberation
STEPHEN ZUNES 13 December
“Mandela was a great leader because he recognized that the movement had become a civil insurrection, a largely nonviolent struggle. A great leader is one who recognizes where the movement is and leads them accordingly, not one who says, ‘Do it my way!’”
In the time since his death at age 95, Nelson Mandela’s thinking on the strategic direction of the liberation struggle in South Africa has been oversimplified by proponents of nonviolent and armed resistance alike. His leadership in the relatively peaceful end to the brutal apartheid system was indeed critical, as was his leadership three decades earlier in the shift from nonviolent to armed resistance by the African National Congress (ANC). Yet many analysts have largely ignored the critical events in South Africa which took place in between, during his nearly three decades in prison.
