Mandela: Hero or Villan?

Is it just me or does anyone else wonder if Nelson Mandela overated? It seems quite a few people seem to either have forgot or don't know why he was banged up. If he was doing his thing now in the current climate, my guess he would be right up there with Bad Lad Bin.

Don't get me wrong, what he was fighting for was good, it's how he fought. Would someone who started a bombing capaign in the USA to bring awareness looking at erasing 3rd World debt be any more favourably looked at??

What's people's views??

Good point - I guess Mahatma Gandhi would be a better hero figure based on your criteria?

Could Mandela and his party have used Gandhi tactics successfully? would peaceful demonstrations have made a difference to apartheid?

I'm willing to be shot down, but i'm guessing the Ghandi tactics (peaceful) have been more successful than violent. Martin Luther King seem to have had the right idea.

One could argue that the S.African Government at the time were as bad as the ANC. History is littered with militant groups being funded by the West to overthrow Governments. We are told Saddam was funded by the West to gain power?

Mandela was certainly fighting for the freedom and liberty of his people; however, he didn't use terrorist tactics and kill people in other countries around the world to achieve is goal. He freed his people from a lifetime of apartheid.

What Bin Ladin is doing is just pure terrorism. He isn't liberating anybody and doesn't care about the future of his people. They aren't even his people or his country. Terrorists take their cause too far and distort the aim. They intimidate and kill to achieve their purpose and then try and justify it as being their calling from god.

In a way, compare Mandela to Queen Bodacea who stood against the Romans and freed Britons from slavery. How about what William Wallace did for the Scotland against the English.

Freedom is worth fighting for and people do get killed too while making a stand against oppression. Bin ladin and Saddam can only be compared to Hitler and Mussolini - dictators and pure evil.