Was Nelson Mandela Justified

Intro Nelson Mandela struggled with the apartheid government to free his people from slavery for years. He did not take any easy way out for himself. He could have made his struggle much easier, but he chose to have it harder on himself and use that as a way to gain the acceptance of the people. Mandela did not condone the violence until he felt that every peaceful aspect had been tried. Many people have ideas about what life events are worth fighting for, Mandela chose his to fight peacefully until everything was out of control. These great thinkers, Thomas Hobbs, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant would have agreed with the choices that Mandela made.

Nelson Mandela I am not someone who usually condones violence, I think that it needs to be a last resort. I believe that Nelson Mandela was justified in using violence to resist the apartheid. He went years trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution for his people. “Our resort to the armed struggle in 1960 with the formation of the military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe, was a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid.” (Mandela, 1990) There are many reasons that the African population should have fought for their freedom, but for the British to hold their women and children in concentration camps was

If a decision is made it has to be for the good of the whole. Kant’s view on what Mandela did for his people is that if we are able to do it we should. Mandela spent years in prison without taking any shortcuts by reducing his sentence he was working towards the greater good of his people. Mandela could have shortened his time and got out early, but because he felt it would not be moral to get out without being able to free his people he stayed in to support the people as a whole. Kant would have believed that because Mandela was selfless in his acts and therefore he would have agreed with what Mandela