> Reagan has a weird relationship with apartheid

If by "weird relationship" you mean "supported it", then yes. Reagan was an out-and-out racist asshole, whose pro-apartheid policies were so extreme that his own party, despite itself being a party filled with racist fucks, nonetheless felt a need to override his veto to try to distance themselves from his over-the-top level of extremism.

If you're hoping I'm going to chime in defending Ronald Reagan, sorry. :)

That's a rather inaccurate way to describe it!

The US government was not at all opposing apartheid, but had to react to pressures. They could easily have imposed a boycott and collapsed the regime way before it did. Instead they send military support to the oppressors.

And sure Mandela was a terrorist, to some... He terrorized the dictators.

Now seriously, Who is a Nelson Mandela today and do you support him/her?

He was a great man, maybe the Greatest who ever lived in my lifetime, he prevented so much bloodshed and demonstrated a level of forgiveness I doubt we will witness again for a very long time.

I still find it hard to believe South Africa ended up the way it did, rather than going the Zimbabwe route of decades of revenge leading to economic stagnation, poverty and mob violence.

He was a terrorist. The ANC persecuted those who they believed cooperated with the white people. They "necklaced" them with burning tires. They bombed and assassinated.

The Taliban are terrorists, even if they believe the USA is a dictator/devil.

Believing that the ends justifies the means (as Mandela did) is very dangerous. Who gets to decide which innocent must be sacrificed to achieve the ends? Do the innocents get a say? History is littered dictators (and democracies) who are well meaning (from their/their culture's POV) who engaged in blood baths. Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe is an example of what might of happened in South Africa.

Edit: Its worth mentioning that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is another Nobel Peace Prize wining South African. He advocated the end of apartheid without violence. Another great man from that country.

Edit edit: I met a South African man in North Carolina. We had a long discussion about history and politics. He had (or at least claimed) to have participated in ANC guerrilla training in the Congo or Angola (can't remember which). I asked him why they did not want white blood in revenge, and why they were still not furious. I can't remember his reply, but I remember wondering if Mandela and Tutu had not preached forgiveness, would his attitude have been the same.

And that cuts both ways, right? The ends don't justify the means for the US either, correct?

Sorry, it amuses the hell out of me how we like to define terrorists, freedom fighters, and so on. And then place artificial constraints on those we decide are bad, and allow all sort of evil to be done by those we decide are good. So how a suicide bomber or an IED is cowardly, but a drone strike is a wonderful act of patriotism. Its makes me sick.

Frankly, violence is needed for change most of the time. Sometimes its good, sometimes its bad. Depends who gets to write the history after the event.

> Believing that the ends justifies the means (as Mandela did) is very dangerous.

The ends is the only thing that can justify any means taken.

Its only wrong to believe that a particular set of ends justifies a particular set of means when, well, it doesn't.

There's really no simple fortune-cookie answer to morality of difficult situations.

> Believing that the ends justifies the means (as Mandela did) is very dangerous.

Yes, yet disbelieving that is often worse.

I have no idea what it means for a representative democracy to "not oppose" something but rather "react to pressures". Whatever that pressure was, it caused the Republican-controlled Senate to override the veto of a Republican President. If it's helpful for you, here's the law, which not only opposed apartheid but also banned imports from the South African state and cut off aid; it also stated the sense of Congress that the US should meet with... wait for it... Nelson Mandela.

http://uscode.house.gov/statutes/1986/1986-099-0440.pdf

Here and elsewhere in this thread you are giving a misleading impression of the GOP's and Reagan's relationship to sanctions legislation. They fought it tooth and claw, and were eventually shamed into doing something, which turned out to be as little as possible, too late to matter.

That's what the parent comment is trying to get across. I have no idea why you're failing to see the distinction between legislators genuinely working on an issue vs. being dragged by public opinion.

The background is that most of the GOP leadership (political and think-tank) rejected sanctions against the apartheid government of SA during the 1980s. Similar to other muddles today, a cloud of confusion was thrown up to stop or delay passage of US sanctions. ("Sanctions would hurt the poorest most", etc.) It was all just a BS rationale to keep from implementing sanctions against a government considered a US ally (the ANC was associated with Communism), but it was all taken seriously at the time. Vintage Cold War logic.

A watered-down bill eventually passed the Democratic House, and went to the GOP-controlled Senate, where it was diluted and barely passed. Reagan had not anticipated this, and vetoed the bill. And it was then over-ridden. His administration never went along with the sanctions implementation.

By the time the GHW Bush administration took over and did somewhat better, the jig was up. The Berlin wall fell in 1989, removing the "bulwark against communism" rationale for US support of apartheid, and Mandela was released from jail in 1990.

*

I have some attachment to the issue because my roommates were involved in sit-ins, a tent city, and other political organizing at the time. It was a defining issue of the mid-1980s.

The idea that the USG put Mandela on a terrorist watchlist as a way of sabotaging efforts to end apartheid is false. That is the only argument I'm making.

If you're looking to me to stick up for the Republican Party, you're going to be disappointed.

"If you're looking to me to stick up for the Republican Party, you're going to be disappointed."

I'm aware of that, which is why your comments puzzled me.

I'm just trying to be honest about the Reagan record regarding apartheid South Africa.

The US had to support the South African regime during the Cold War, because South Africa was strategically important. After the Cold War, there was no further reason to support it, and the US stopped supporting it.

>Now seriously, Who is a Nelson Mandela today and do you support him/her?

it is great to have a Mandela like champion of your cause. Yet what about uncountable people (or animals) - victims of violence and injustice ( or they may be even not considered to have any rights for justice thus even "injustice" can't be claimed ). Sirian war is still going on. Women's rights in muslim world still an issue to say the least. Hungry and ill children around the world. Tibetans still set themselves on fire (latest one - 2 days ago). Gestation crates, dog fights, eutanasia of multi-millions annually and all the other things we do to animals.... A lot of causes needing their Mandela.

To many people, Osama Bin Laden was their Nelson Mandela.

Osama Bin Laden? Hugo Chavez? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

You don't need to look too far from home.