Simon Parker

Hmmm... I suppose what's interesting about Mandela is his moral leadership and the fact that he basically fought against a regime most people can agree was pretty nasty. The story we tell about Mandela is a simple black and white morality tale - good versus evil, suffering and integrity overcoming oppression.What's interesting to me is the way that we've removed a lot of the moral complexity from the Mandela story. This guy wasn't Ghandi - he coordinated attacks on the South African government as head of the ANC's armed wing. Maybe that was justified resistance, but there's no doubt that the ANC committed its own human rights abuses in the struggle against apartheid.I don't want to sound all Chris Hitchins about this, and I'm certainly not saying that Mandela's guerrilla activities undermine the legend - Mandela is clearly one of the world's great leaders. But what does it mean when one of our moral figureheads was once accused of being a terrorist? Does it tell us anything useful about our attitudes to heroes and terror?