Mandela and Violence Nonviolence is the best approach to things; but sometimes you have to be violent to get things done. Mandela was a man of peace and prosperity, who fights for justice. In Mandela’s “I am prepared to die” 20 April 1964, he tells his story on violence. He was fighting to abolish apartheid which restricted black rights. His first approach was nonviolent; after a while the peaceful protests stopped working, and then the Boers began being violent and Mandela felt he had no other choice. Mandela supported nonviolence throughout the beginning of his support and even before he started to support the movement the blacks used nonviolence and it failed to get any rights. The more nonviolent protests that the black South Africans …show more content…
The more nonviolent protests that the black South Africans carried out, the worse they got treated. Mandela explained this by saying “I planned it (violence) as a result of calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites”(2). This shows that when the protests had gotten together in a peaceful assessment then the whites would just start to oppress and exploit the blacks more. Another point is that thousands came to protest the laws one day and approximately 8,500 people were jailed for doing nothing but nonviolent protest. This is shown when Mandela says “The ANC launched a Defiance Campaign, in which I was placed in charge of volunteers. This campaign was based on the principles of passive resistance. More than 8,500 people defied apartheid laws and went to jail. Yet there was not a single instance of violence in the course of this campaign”(3). The people had defied the apartheid laws but did not use any such violence, just passive protest that should not led the d. Mandela said “ In 1920 when the famous leader, Masabalala, was held in port Elizabeth jail, twenty-four of a group of Africans who had gathered to demand his release were killed by the police and white civilians”(7). This shows that