In case of ANC, it definitely did things that fit the colloqual definition of terrorism - i.e. targeting civilians for political purposes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMkhonto_we_Sizwe#1980s:_Bombi...

That's not a justification of apartheid, though. One can argue that apartheid and terrorism are both morally despicable. Or one may argue that terrorism is sometimes justifiable.

And there are many other historical examples of the same. E.g. Soviet partisans did a lot of things that would also be considered terrorism during WW2 - targeting not Germans or their pet militias, but civilians accused of collaboratinism (which could be very vaguely defined - e.g. teachers who refused to close down schools on occupied territories). Again, you could debate whether it was justified or not, especially in the context of much broader use of terrorist tactics by Germans themselves, but that's a separate conversation.

I'd call Bantustans terrorism though.

Why bother, when there's an example of straight-up, blatant terrorist tactics by the apartheid government:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Council_of_Churc...

> Were violent European revolutions against their monarchs all terroristic?

Unfortunately the answer is something like "yes but we don't want to speak about that because it makes us feel uncomfortable" most of the time. Thing is western society has been doing well the past 20/30 years regarding civil-war like violence at a large scale and for a hard to fix issue, and no one wants to talk about how or why but everyone wants to believe days of violent civil uprising are long gone.

No, they weren't. Nevermind the fact that "terrorism" is a stupid word - these were justified conflicts of a people against tyranny. Violence for those aims is justified.

I don't think terrorism is a stupid word, it just means terrorizing civil population outside of normal militia vs. militia violence on the field. In a lot of those conflicts civilians that were persecuted by the government fought back with unconventional action, I'm not saying it was not justified, but it did involve innocent bystanders. For example during the end of the French revolution, as a reaction to the Reign of Terror and Robespierre, on the storming of the Hall of Paris.

What's stupid is thinking that on a violent conflict only one side can be guilty of terrorism.

I'm not passing judgement on his stance, the ANC's actions, and even on whether terrorism is a good or bad thing. I'm merely stating that he did have prolonged support of the entity that we today call terrorism.

Terrorism is not an entity, so I don't understand what you are saying.

If you are saying that the ANCs actions make them objectively terrorists, I would say that I've never seen the term terrorist used in an objective and consistent manner.

Was the violence always against the state or was it also against innocent civilians? Not really the same thing.

Sorry, trying to follow the threads here. Because some violence was perpetrated against civilians, I should thus expect Nelson Mandela to denounce all violence against the apartheid state and condemn him for failure to do so?

Why is the same charge not levied against the apartheid South African state, which refused to renounce violence after committing violence against its own black citizens (forcible imprisonment, beatings, etc.) for daring to marry a white person, against anyone who was caught in a white area of the country, etc. etc.?

I don't know what you should do, I do think it's complicated.