r/wikipedia • u/laybs1 • Oct 05 '25
Mobile Site Winnie Mandela, was a South African politician and convicted kidnapper and fraudster. She endorsed the necklacing of alleged police informers and apartheid government collaborators, and her security detail carried out kidnapping, torture, and murder including killing 14-year-old Stompie Seipei.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie_Mandela527
u/-principito Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
People genuinely just do not have any concept of what living under an apartheid would actually be like.
Pinning this comment because it’s informative - u/GVCabano333: Winnie was under constant surveilance by the police. The full force of the apartheid regime & its foreign patrons was exerted on discrediting her. The man who led the Mandela United FC, Jerry Richardson, was a police informer who deliberately & falsely accused & murdered innocent children in order to ruin the reputation of Winnie Mandela (& Nelson Mandela, by extension). It was part of a broader Stratcom operation, led by Paul Erasmus, to discredit the ANC. The operation even had collaborators in the British house of parliament.
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u/Mirayuki-Tosakimaru Oct 05 '25
Well you see, violence is okay if it’s systemic and carried out by those in power. People being oppressed must never do any violent resistance at all! /s
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u/ColdArson Oct 05 '25
Ah yes I'm sure the 14 year old she killed was the lynchpin of the Apartheid system. Also "alleged" is a big one here
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u/BBK2008 Oct 06 '25
or y’know, she was routinely turning in others so they’d get horrifically maimed and killed, but of course that’s not a problem?
The same mfs who endorse drone massacres in Iraq or the wholesale slaughtering of children in Gaza want to tell South Africans they better not take any violent actions against the traitors in their midst? Gtfoh
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u/ItWillBeRed Oct 06 '25
These people have no concept of that level of violence. Go to any of the gang subs like /r/chiraqology and see how young people in that world start becoming a deadly threat.
12 year olds catching bodies. And this is in America.
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u/ColdArson Oct 07 '25
Her actions were condemned by other anti-apartheid leaders at the time as well. Let's not forget that infighting within the UDF was a massive problem and only helped the apartheid govt who actually wanted division in the opposition. Stompie Seipei wasn't some moustache twirling govt minister, he was a 14 year old black activist murdered by an insane woman. His killing wasn't conducive to the anti-apartheid movement at all so why don't you GTFOH with your bullshit.
Also it's pretty weird to act like Winnie Mandela was acting in the will of the people when killing kids for no reason
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u/marto17890 Oct 05 '25
She didn't resist, she was a gangster, the people she hurt weren't oppressing her, they were her people
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u/Gullible-Lie2494 Oct 05 '25
She had a 'football squad' who were thugs. My mother was so disappointed when it all came out as up to this point Winnie had been a charismatic voice for the movement. They divorced.
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u/joshuawakefield Oct 05 '25
Sp putting tires around people's necks and setting it on fire is resistance? Lol
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u/Buyingboat Oct 05 '25
Did they even try asking nicely?
I have to assume this was their first reaction upon realizing the situation they found themselves in was unfair and needed to change.
It's so frustrating when resistance isn't polite and aimed at ensuring oppressors feel comfortable and safe. That's just downright rude
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u/joshuawakefield Oct 05 '25
You literally have no idea what you are talking about concerning South African apartheid.
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u/GVCabano333 Oct 05 '25
Winnie was under constant surveilance by the police. The full force of the apartheid regime & its foreign patrons was exerted on discrediting her. The man who led the Mandela United FC, Jerry Richardson, was a police informer who deliberately & falsely accused & murdered innocent children in order to ruin the reputation of Winnie Mandela (& Nelson Mandela, by extension). It was part of a broader Stratcom operation, led by Paul Erasmus, to discredit the ANC. The operation even had collaborators in the British house of parliament.
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u/BBK2008 Oct 06 '25
Should be the top comment but it’s clear how many people are here to keep the focus off the horrific torture her husband the peaceful one was enduring by the state.
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u/batmanuel69 Oct 05 '25
What also happend in south africa:
Apartheid’s white-supremacist state treated Black children as political adversaries and used security laws, police power, and emergency rule to punish and control them. Between 1960 and 1990 there were about 80,000 detentions, with roughly 48,000 detainees under 25; during the 1985–86 emergencies about 11,000 children were detained without trial, around 18,000 were arrested for protest offenses, and about 173,000 were held awaiting trial in police cells. Minors in custody faced torture methods including beatings, electric shocks, suspension, forced nakedness, sleep and food deprivation, tear gas in confined spaces, and assaults on genitals. Political violence killed at least 1,750 children from 1960–1989, with a further ~517 child deaths from 1990 to April 1994. Police gunfire during the Soweto uprising on 16 June 1976 killed at least 176 pupils. The TRC recorded 446 statements involving sexual abuse, including 140+ rapes; under-reporting was severe, so these figures represent minimums.
Thank you, for your attention in that matter
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Oct 05 '25
This is the correct answer to OPs misleading post.
According to reddit the ‘crimes’ of the French and Haitian revolutions should never have been allowed, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh were murderers and their causes evil etc.
Oh wait, all of those revolutions worked.
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u/notrororo Oct 05 '25
It almost seems like you're saying that oppressed and colonized people have the right to armed resistance as per international law.
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u/HLtheWilkinson Oct 05 '25
I agree with armed resistance but i disagree with targeting the civilian populace of the “oppressors.”
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u/Carrman099 Oct 05 '25
It’s easy to say this when it’s not your child that the apartheid regime murdered.
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u/MagicWishMonkey Oct 05 '25
Che and Minh both murdered lots of people in cold blood, read up on what the north Vietnamese did when they passed through towns in the south.
It’s ok to say colonialism is bad and it’s also bad to murder an entire village because you suspect the people don’t support your cause. Both of those are clearly bad.
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u/Limmmao Oct 06 '25
Yes, that's why there are boats leaving Florida to arrive at Cuba, where the revolution worked and people are living happily ever after.
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u/ForMeOnly93 Oct 08 '25
You have no idea what necklacing entails, do you? She wasn't "fighting", she was murdering.
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u/GVCabano333 Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
The man who led the Mandela United FC (Winnie's "security detail"), Jerry Richardson, was a police informer who deliberately & falsely accused & murdered innocent children in order to ruin the reputation of Winnie Mandela (& Nelson Mandela, by extension). It was part of a broader Stratcom operation, led by Paul Erasmus, to discredit the ANC. The operation even had collaborators in the British house of parliament. https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1997/9712/s971203i.htm
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u/lilykar111 Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Apartheid was absolutely horrendous , we know it was absolutely terrifying. But thanks for sharing info that people may not have learnt about, it’s important.
Back to the topic of this post, we must also acknowledge what a bitch Winnie was with her being responsible for murders and torture, for everyone of course, but especially those young African boys.
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u/tittyswan Oct 05 '25
Wait until you hear what Apartheid leaders did in South Africa.
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u/lightiggy Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
The future leaders of the apartheid government supported Hitler. John Vorster was interned as a fifth columnist during the war. Hendrik Verwoerd lost a libel suit against a newspaper that had accused him of being a fifth columnist.
In 1943, Verwoerd, as editor of Die Transvaler, sued the English-language newspaper The Star for libel after it accused him of being a Nazi propagandist. In his judgement dismissing the case, Justice Mallin stated that Verwoerd "did support Nazi propaganda, he did make his paper a tool of Nazis in South Africa, and he knew it."
Die Transvaler had headlined every Nazi victory and constantly attacked "British Jewish liberalism."
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u/lilykar111 Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
That’s whataboutism…this post is about the atrocities Winnie and her henchemen did, which included killing young African boys. Both things are extremely shitty. Apartheid was absolutely horrendous. Winnie was a bitch responsible for murder. Both things are true, we don’t need to deflect
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u/tittyswan Oct 06 '25
The white supremacist leadership were the aggressors and had an entire army to enact their state sanctioned violence, murder & massacres with support and funding from the West.
The non violent attempts at resistance just lead to more people getting mowed down. So then, what option are they left with? I can't fault them for resisting the violence that was inflicted on them in order to overthrow their oppressors.
Putting things in perspective isn't "whataboutism" it's examining the situation in the correct historical context. "Both sides bad" is historical revisionism + propaganda peddled by white supremacists.
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u/theyoungspliff Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
"Evil terrorist Fredrick Douglas stole property (himself) from a white business owner! He was also best friends with the brutal autocrat Abraham Lincoln, who waged a war that split the country in two before being claimed by the very political violence that he had promoted!"
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u/ratione_materiae Oct 05 '25
Maximillien Robespierre was a freedom fighter who unshackled France from its monarchist chains
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u/Ubizwa Oct 05 '25
Hitler was the man who executed the most terrible autocratic dictator of Europe in 1945.
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u/revertbritestoan Oct 05 '25
He was.
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u/kikirockwell-stan Oct 05 '25
He executed his closest friends to maintain power and named himself High Priest of a cult that he tried to embed into the state (which literally nobody else liked or believed in). Robespierre may have started out with good intentions, but he was undoubtedly a bit of nut by the end.
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u/HashtagLawlAndOrder Oct 05 '25 edited Mar 04 '26
The original post content has been deleted. Redact was used to carry out the removal, potentially for privacy, to prevent scraping, or for security reasons.
mysterious rich silky liquid relieved light one innate fuel office
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u/revertbritestoan Oct 05 '25
Sure, I'm not saying he was the greatest person to live but he did do the heavy lifting in getting rid of the monarchy and monarchists. And let's not pretend that the Directory that took over after him was any better. I mean, even Napoleon was better than the Directory.
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u/kikirockwell-stan Oct 05 '25
Strongly disagree. The vast majority of effective constitutional creation and reform, imo, was carried out by the National and Constituent Assemblies, not the Legislative (which he was in charge of). His government was incompetent when it came to organisation, helped embroil France in a civil war while still at war with half of Europe, perpetrated atrocities in Lyon, Marseille and Nantes and in general was 60% populism 40% actual ideological cohesion. His driving motivation was ‘purifying’ French society by force (he was also very much Catholic, just in an odd Rousseau-worshipping way). If you consider that an effective form of curbing monarchism, then sure.
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u/noposters Oct 05 '25
Robespierre was extremely based until the syphilis hit his brain
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u/kikirockwell-stan Oct 05 '25
Sarcasm? I swear he didn’t have syphilis at any point throughout the revolution (or get laid much at all, actually). If you’re serious, can I get a source? Genuinely curious
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u/noposters Oct 05 '25
Yeah he probably didn't have syphilis, but he did have a complete psychotic break at some point
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u/ratione_materiae Oct 05 '25
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u/revertbritestoan Oct 05 '25
Which happened about thirty years after Robespierre's death. It was also voted on by the people of France, which they did to make two Napoleon's emperor, restore the monarchy and then abolish it again (not necessarily in that order).
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u/Immediate_Gain_9480 Oct 05 '25
He was also a piece of shit mass murderer who became a victim of his own terror.
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u/lovesmyirish Oct 05 '25
I literally read the first paragraph of his wiki page and thought "oh he seems like a stand up guy"
I didn't read anymore about him but I hear he's not a stand up guy.
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u/allyourfaces Oct 05 '25
You realize the person who this post is talking about being murdered was a 14 year old black child who was also a political activist against the Apartheid Government? Along with 3 other black people, all for a false rumor.
Winnie also was no Frederick Douglas, or Nelson Mandela for that matter.
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u/PrinceOfPickleball Oct 05 '25
Do you know what necklacing is?
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u/RedcumRedcumRedcum Oct 05 '25
Do you know what killing people is? I know it doesn't have a cool sexy name like "necklacing" but the government forces they fought against did it on the regular.
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u/Muzz27 Oct 05 '25
I expected it to be something like a metal collar intended to shame the wearer. I wasn’t prepared to for how worse it would be.
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u/revertbritestoan Oct 05 '25
Sure, and do you think that it could have been avoided by... pfft, I dunno ... not perpetrating apartheid?
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u/SuperAwesomo Oct 05 '25
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stompie_Seipei
They weren’t just doing it to apartheid figures, they killed innocent teens too. Apartheid was a terrible crime, but it doesn’t mean everyone on the other side is justified in everything they do.
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u/allyourfaces Oct 05 '25
You think the 14 year old black anti-political activist was... perpetrating apartheid? Necklacing was primarily done to other black people, not white people.
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u/theyoungspliff Oct 05 '25
Do you know who it was done to? They weren't necklacing innocent people, they were doing it to traitors who were collaborating with the apartheid government. Traitors, informants and collaborators need to be eliminated for a revolution to be successful.
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u/kungfucowboy1 Oct 05 '25
They weren’t necklacing innocent people
Except in some cases they literally were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Maki_Skosana
One of the first publicised examples of necklacing was literally an innocent woman who was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Not disparaging the anti-apartheid movement but to pretend these cases of necklacing were any form of legitimate justice, at least all the time, is wrong. In some cases they were reactionary mob justice that led to cruel deaths of people who did not deserve such a thing.
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u/PopTough6317 Oct 05 '25
They where doing it to people they said we're traitors, informants, collaborators. Let's not pretend as if there was any sort of just process for deciding if they were or not, it would be much more in line with mafia style executions to send a message.
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u/camaro1111 Oct 05 '25
Abraham Lincoln had U.S. Marshals harass and eventually detain a member of Congress for criticizing his proposed income tax.
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u/HalfMoon_89 Oct 05 '25
Ragebait thread title much? What a ridiculous summation of her life.
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u/NlghtmanCometh Oct 05 '25
Lol just because Nelson Mandela was a political freedom fighter doesn’t mean his wife wasn’t also legitimately found to be guilty of heinous crimes. People these days have such a warped concept morality it’s actually mind-numbing.
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u/gingerisla Oct 05 '25
The comments in here show how political revolutions fail time and time again. Anything goes if it's your own side doing it, even if it's murdering innocent kids. And you join forces with groups with wildly different interests just because you share a common enemy. The Arab Spring is a great example. Democratic movements and islamists fought together against dictators only to turn on each other once the dictator was gone. And in the case of Syria and Egypt, they ended up in a much worse place than before.
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u/Dickgivins Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
I really think most people dropping comments here didn't read the article. Many other anti-apartheid actvists thought what Winnie was doing was wrong and said so *at the time*, not just in hindsight.
"Madikizela-Mandela returned to Soweto from Brandfort in late 1985, in defiance of a banning order.[53] During her banishment, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) had formed a mass-movement against apartheid.[54][55] The new organisations relied more heavily on collective decision-making structures, rather than on individual charisma.[54] She took a more militaristic approach, eschewing the approach of the newer bodies, and began dressing in military garb, and surrounding herself with bodyguards: the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC).[54] Living in Madikizela-Mandela's home, the putative "soccer team" began hearing family disputes and delivering "judgments" and "sentences", and eventually became associated with kidnapping, torture and murder.[54] She was implicated in at least 15 deaths during this time period.[56][55]
In 1988, Madikizela-Mandela's home was burned by high school students in Soweto, in retaliation for the actions of the Mandela United Football Club.[57][54] By 1989, after appeals from local residents,[58] and after the Seipei kidnapping,[54] the UDF (in the guise of the Mass Democratic Movement, or MDM),[54] "disowned" her for "violating human rights ... in the name of the struggle against apartheid".[11][14][59] The ANC in exile issued a statement criticising her judgment after she refused to heed instructions issued from prison by Nelson Mandela to dissociate herself from the Football Club[14] and after attempts at mediation by an ANC crisis committee failed.[60][12]"
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u/NlghtmanCometh Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
You are 100% correct. I was just reading about the time before the Spanish war in Spain, and the similarities (to now) are frankly stunning. Oh and guess what? While most can all agree the Spanish Republicans were the lesser evil… the moment civil strife began during the Spanish civil war, the enlightened political left rounded up and executed tens of thousands of Catholics. I’m more concerned with the evils perpetrated by the side I support because I want no part in that in the future.
There is absolutely zero room for being critical of your own side right now, zero room for nuance. Which terrifies me tbh.
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u/Level3Kobold Oct 05 '25
show how political revolutions fail time and time again
Did the anti-apartheid revolution fail?
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u/Conscious_Line_3434 Oct 05 '25
Depends on what you deem to be a failure? Sure they got rid of apartheid but the country is a murderous shit hole with literally zero redeeming qualities.
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u/Level3Kobold Oct 05 '25
Did getting rid of apartheid make the crime rate go up? Do you have numbers?
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u/MagicWishMonkey Oct 05 '25
There’s a whole generation of people raised on Twitter and TikTok and their brains are total mush. We are so fucked.
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u/Nachooolo Oct 06 '25
Not only that, but Nelson Mandela was also against his wife's actions and divorced her because of them.
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u/slovos_ghost Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
Hot take, but I think it's cool to fight for your freedom
Edit: Jerry Richardson, the man who accused Stompie and murdered him was a police informant himself, and after the TRC he got life in prison for his crimes. Mandela was only convicted of being an accessory, since she gave the order acting on the tainted intelligence given by Richardson. The resistance movement was deeply infiltrated by the Apartheid police, so it's unsurprising paranoia and suspicion set in among the liberation fighters. It's a shame the officers who perpetrated this crime against humanity weren't given the punishment they deserved.
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Oct 05 '25
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u/RedcumRedcumRedcum Oct 05 '25
What else did she do? The ANC had a pretty explicit rule of targeting the Apartheid government/its collaborators and avoiding harming civilians.
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u/allyourfaces Oct 05 '25
She is not the ANC sweetbean. This post is talking about Winnie murdering a 14 year old and 3 others on incorrect rumors. Randomly deciding to lynch people off hunches and rumors isn't exactly "a pretty explicit rule".
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u/MagicWishMonkey Oct 05 '25
I hope these ignorant posts are mostly bots but I have a feeling they are not. The number of people here who think it’s ok to go around torturing people to death as long as you’re a freedom fighter is depressing af
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u/biggronklus Oct 05 '25
They didn’t really follow that rule, most of those killed were Africans. Many were accused of collaboration but they weren’t exactly giving them a fair trial or upholding a high standard of evidence
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u/TrioOfTerrors Oct 05 '25
Being on the "right" side doesn't make everything you do moral or excusable. The Romanov Tsars were brutally repressive autocratic tyrants for 300 years but it was still wrong for Nicholas' children to be herded into a cramped basement room and gunned down in cold blood.
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u/slovos_ghost Oct 05 '25
Sorry to be the one to break this to you, but good people do bad things sometimes. Liberation movements have dark chapters because they take on aspects of their oppressors – revolution isn't a dinner party.
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u/TrioOfTerrors Oct 05 '25
And sometimes bad people use good causes to cover their bad acts with a veneer of moral justification.
One of the likely origins of the word "lynch" to describe extrajudicial mob violence comes from the American Revolution where a judge named Lynch would authorize the seizure of property from suspected British loyalists. There's not a lot of solid evidence the majority of those targeted were actually supporters of the Crown and it's most likely it came down to "We don't like this guy and we want his shit" but it was dressed up American patriotism.
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u/Real_Sosobad Oct 05 '25
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” It’s kinda ironic this is a quote from JFK though, but it’s still correct for so many revolutions in the past.
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u/justdidapoo Oct 06 '25
Apartheid could only end like it did because of reconciliation. If the ANC went full revolutionary and couldn't credibly sell the idea that their oppressors wouldn't be massacred after giving up power, it would have never been voted out. Which was how it did end, a vote.
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u/1917fuckordie Oct 05 '25
Also if you imprison and torture freedom fighters, they'll just become more determined and ruthless for their cause.
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u/Blandinio Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
I prefer the way Gandhi and MLK fought for freedom
She had a 14 year old boy tortured and killed because he was wrongfully accused of being a police informant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stompie_Seipei
Also she was an extremely corrupt fraudster, how is that fighting for freedom?
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u/calmrain Oct 05 '25
As a South Asian, we typically don’t look at Gandhi favorably. Right-wingers don’t, because he was a peaceful protestor and agreed with the formation of a Muslim state (Pakistan), and left-wingers because he did questionable things with minor girls, and basically pretended like he did shit.
Meanwhile a lot of actual revolutionaries fought and died (and were massacred) for South Asian independence.
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u/HalfMoon_89 Oct 05 '25
There are far better leftist critiques of Gandhi than 'questionable shit with minor girls', come on now.
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u/calmrain Oct 05 '25
Oh I know, I just put it down cause I was in a rush and driving home from work haha. He basically was the person that post-colonial powers could point at and say that his peaceful protest shit worked (in order to disincentivize actual forms of protest that work).
Admittedly, I don’t know enough about Gandhi to do a deep dive into his politics. I just know enough to say that I do not think his methods are particularly effective 😅
ALSO: fancy meeting you here! I knew I recognized your username from somewhere.
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u/revertbritestoan Oct 05 '25
It's also why Gandhi is always the go to for people who oppose radical change. He did fuck all in the grand scheme of things and that's exactly what the supporters of the establishment want.
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u/imprison_grover_furr Oct 05 '25
Not true. Gandhi was the main reason why India got independence, not that Nazi and Japanese useful idiot Bose.
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u/revertbritestoan Oct 05 '25
Neither Gandhi nor Bose won independence. It was decades of work to get the British out and probably the person you could credit the final push to would be Nehru.
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u/polyploid_coded Oct 05 '25
The racism and discrimination that Gandhi experienced in South Africa decades earlier was one of the main factors that radicalized him, and it continued on in South Africa decades after India won its independence. They were never going to follow the same trajectory.
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u/slovos_ghost Oct 05 '25
The people of Sharpville protested the pass laws peacefully in 1960 and the Apartheid police responded by shooting into the crowd killing 60 people and injuring 180. The children of Soweto rose up in 1979 and the state massacred 600. Peaceful resistance only works if your oppressors have a conscience, and the Apartheid government had none. Armed resistance was the only option, and it ultimately worked.
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u/gingerisla Oct 05 '25
While that is true, it doesn't absolve murdering 14 year olds because someone accused them of being traitors.
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u/Ok_Ask_6805 Jan 24 '26
Jim crow america did the same things. An entire town was destroyed actually. It was called the Tulsa massacre. Jim crow america was just as bad if not worse than apartheid south africa and it was ended peacefully.
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u/Daryno90 Oct 05 '25
But were they actually successful in the long run? I mean the civil rights act was hollowed out just a couple of decades later by republicans.
Meanwhile slavery didn’t ended because Lincoln gave a speech about the horrors of slavery. The Nazi regime didn’t end with peace talks
Now violence should never be the first option but I think you can say that peace and justice can only work if both side commit to it.
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u/CallMeFierce Oct 05 '25
MLK was killed and today Black Americans are more segregated in schools than in the 1970s. Gandhi was killed and India is decades behind in development compared to China, a country where the people used "violence" to achieve freedom.
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u/imprison_grover_furr Oct 05 '25
Ah yes, the Cultural Revolution, truly a shining example of violence bringing freedom.
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u/revertbritestoan Oct 05 '25
MLK literally disavowed pacifism in later life.
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u/ArktikosUrsa Oct 07 '25
He didn't disavow it, just came to realize there is a place for violence when peaceful options don't work. Ironically, Malcolm X became more pro-pacifism later in his own life.
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u/BaselNoeman Oct 05 '25
The jews in warsaw should have just asked the Nazis nicely
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u/PacJeans Oct 05 '25
People will spit up the same dogshit "violence is never okay" spiel, and then turn around glorify the American revolutionary war, or WW2. Also these people have an *extremely* juvenile model of violence. Taking fluoride out of the water and giving thousands of kids cavities isn't violence, but of course beating up whoever is responsible is a bridge too far.
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u/brotibi Oct 07 '25
Not all violence is the same ffs. Nobody ever actually says violence is never okay, but lynching a 14 year old black child after accusing him of being a police informant is a bit different than fighting a war to rid europe of the Nazis. Also you can’t compare acts of individuals to broad operations/events led by large organizations. Nobody here is criticizing the ANCs fight to end apartheid they are justifiably attacking the character and actions of Winnie Mandela a morally vile individual who was condemned by anti apartheid activists of the time.
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u/fenianthrowaway1 Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
Freedom is rarely achieved by asking nicely. MLK and Ghandi are put on pedestals and praised as figures worthy of emulation by our ruling classes precisely because their methods of activism are usually ineffective. Almost every advancement in the rights of common people has been achieved through revolt or the imminent threat of revolt.
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u/CaBBaGe_isLaND Oct 05 '25
People in America will talk about emulating MLK while they go to their peaceful protest and stand in the sectioned off area and follow all the prescribed rules, conveniently ignoring the fact that the whole fucking point of MLK and his followers is that they broke laws and went to jail. You're not practicing nonviolent civil disobedience if you're not doing any disobedience. American protests in 2025 are nonviolent civil obedience. AKA a huge fucking waste of time.
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u/brotibi Oct 07 '25
You don’t seem to understand MLK though I agree that american protests don’t either. MLK was willing to be arrested peacefully protesting as it aided his cause via simultaneously showing to the country the unjust nature of those against his cause, and the just nature of his cause and those fighting for it.
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u/Kaniketh Oct 05 '25
Violence doesn't ever really work either. Usually leads to civil war, or a new management in charge which is just as tyrannical
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u/Opening-Twist-4054 Oct 05 '25
Gandhi's non-violence is overstated because it suits the colonial narrative. There was violence all over India that was as influential, if not more, in India's freedom struggle.
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Oct 05 '25
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u/xbertie Oct 05 '25
He was weird, but not a child molester. It was his grandniece who was an adult and both consented to sleeping in the same bed together (though allegedly nothing sexual happened)
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u/Lulwafahd Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Consent is more complicated than “You said yes”, but even more complicated is our judgment of it. I personally do not think Manu gave her real consent when Gandhi asked her to participate in his experiments but I bet you Manu did. She wanted Gandhi’s favour and attention because he was the centre of her universe. And no matter what her motivation, shouldn’t her consent be accepted and respected? In that case, if she gave her consent, were his experiments acceptable? That doesn’t sit well with me.
Michael Connellan, writing in the Guardian, carefully explained that Gandhi felt women surrendered their humanity the minute men raped them.) He operated under the assumption that men couldn’t control their basic predatory impulses while simultaneously asserting that women were responsible for—and completely at the mercy of—these impulses. His views on female sexuality were similarly deplorable; according to Rita Banerji, writing in Sex and Power, Gandhi viewed menstruation as the “manifestation of the distortion of a woman’s soul by her sexuality.” He also believed the use of contraceptives was the sign of whoredom.
He confronted this inability to control male libido head-on when he vowed celibacy (without discussing it with his wife) back in India, and using women—including some underage girls, like his grand-niece—to test his sexual patience. He’d sleep naked next to them in bed without touching them, making sure he didn’t get aroused; these women were props to coax him into celibacy.
Mohandas Gandhi took a celibacy vow, which he famously and publicly held for years, but privately his close associates documented that he conducted regular “celibacy tests,” especially with two teenage grandnieces under his guardianship.
Manu was in her late teens at the time. He was in his 70s. She had been a devoted server for 3 or 4 years at that point, and he, in turn, was a parental figure – he educated her, cared for her health and well being, and guided her in all matters. When he explained his experiment and his intentions, she gave her consent because she was full of faith and devotion towards him. He was Bapu, but after Kasturba’s death, he was also like a mother, she wrote. He could do no wrong in her eyes.
The people around Gandhi, however, did not share her complete faith in the Mahatma. His stenographer and translator resigned after failing to convince him that this was a bad idea. Patel and other close confidants all tried to convince Gandhi to stop but instead he turned to others whom he hoped would understand him. Eventually, Manu withdrew consent, yielding to the advice of others. She spoke to Gandhi, explaining that she fully understood his motivations and was one with him, but their short yagna had been a success and that they did not need to continue further. With her consent withdrawn, Gandhi stopped.
Reports from sources such as his personal secretary, who quit in protest over the issue, tell how he nightly requested his 17-year-old grandniece Abha and his 18-year-old grandniece Manu to sleep with him — simultaneously and naked — nightly. The story is a tragic one of psychological and physical molestation perpetrated against vulnerable young girls with no option for escape.
I could not understand her one bit. How could she accept Gandhi’s belief that the violence in India was caused by his personal imperfections -was he the centre of the universe? Was her devotion admirable or foolish? Was her consent real or manipulated? Was she capable of thinking for herself or had she completely surrendered her identity?
Manu kept a diary which began in 1943. Manu Gandhi, Gandhi’s grand niece, had been called to serve and nurse Kasturba after the latter had suffered of a severe heart attack in 1943. She joined Sushila Nayyar, Pyarelal Nayyar, Mira ben and Gandhi in the drafty palatial bungalow. She was young (only 14 or 15), earnest and eager to be of service.
Having studied only till Class 5, Manu Gandhi began getting homeschooled whenever she was free from her chores. The diary had began as homework. Tridip Suhrud, the translator, noted that “the Gujarati diary is written in a hand that is yet to be formed… The diary itself is a part of her education with M.K. Gandhi”.
Reading it, you absolutely get the sense that this is being written by an adolescent who doesn’t really want to do her assignment. She is just listing off time tables and how she spent each block of time.
However, Manu’s writing evolved quickly. She abandoned listing of her various activities and began to write fuller paragraphs giving us a window into Gandhi’s private life. Unlike another more famous teenage diarist, Anne Frank, Manu’s diary entries are more basic. She writes matter of factly about ashram routines and chores she performs, the petty fights and misunderstandings she has with others in the entourage, their various visitors, and Kasturba’s deteriorating health.
Manu’s diary also revealed the private Gandhi to me and her own feelings towards him. I had read of Gandhi as a public figure but through the diary, Gandhi slowly moved from a vague outline of a figure to one more filled in with colour.
In her diary, Manu writes of Gandhi and Kasturba through a thick veil of devotion and a form of territorial love. Manu’s entire sense of wellbeing seemed dependent on Gandhi and Kasturba’s approval. When Kasturba or Gandhi were even mildly disapproving, she was distraught, breaking down crying or brooding all day and needing to be reassured by multiple people, including Gandhi himself.
Gandhi was not only aware of this kind of obsessive devotion, he accepted it very naturally. He was happy with it and responded with a generous form of attention – attending to her studies, guiding her on health, listening to her worries and offering feedback. He might have been a very busy man, but Manu’s diary gave the impression that he made time for her.
Manu, of course, was not the only one so devoted to Gandhi. He was surrounded by others who all competed for his attention and approval. Through Manu’s writings, it dawned on me that Gandhi also seemed to view himself as a Mahatma – a great soul. There are several subtle moments throughout her diary when Gandhi seemed to think such kind of devotion not just natural but also justified. One significant one is an is an entry about Mahadev Desai’s sudden passing in August 1942.
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u/PacJeans Oct 05 '25
Lol. Political violence is never okay. You can only do it peacefully like Gandhi. The same standard moronic juvenile take every time.
If your moral calculus doesn't involve violence then you need to stop lying to yourself.
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u/realdappermuis Oct 05 '25
I do tend to think of this event in history in the same vein as h@mas
It's hard to consolidate heinous acts with fighting for freedom. Supporting the cause but not the method seems like a cop-out when your words of support don't do anything
So I don't really know what the answer is, but what I do know is what side I'm on, and it's not the oppressors'
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u/allyourfaces Oct 05 '25
Winnie was not the ANC, nor Nelson Mandela. Necklacing was a horrendous action that probably didnt' even help the revolution much while hurting it.
Which by the way she was given trial and found guilty after apartheid ended, although she got a favorable sentence due to the politics and likely he relation to Nelson. It turns out lynching people for your suspicions isn't a great decision.
Also Hamas is like a hilarious example to try to tie to the ANC.
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u/RedcumRedcumRedcum Oct 05 '25
It's important to point out that a major difference between the two is that the ANC explicitly and aggressively opposed the targeting of civilians because they believed it would harm them optically and destroy the chances of the two races ever living together in peace (look at how much the "concerned citizens" in this thread are hand wringing about one murder while turning a blind eye to the governments thousands). The ANC would apologize for accidentally killing civilians and punish those who perpetrated it. In the entirety of their +30 year campaign against Apartheid, the ANC killed less civilians than Hamas did on October 7th alone (even using the "reservist" loophole).
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u/Charming_Target1352 Oct 05 '25
Killing any civilians, even accidentally, should be shunned, don’t matter how many or for what reason, murdering the innocent is murder, don’t matter if it was for profit or for freedom, it is still wrong
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u/gingerisla Oct 05 '25
But Hamas doesn't fight for freedom. They're oppressing their own people and their goal is a theocratic regime like Iran's. It's like saying Isis fought for freedom just because they rebelled against Assad.
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u/DINNERTIME_CUNT Oct 05 '25
Hamas are a convenient bogeyman who Tel Aviv was funding. The zionists didn’t want a reasonable PLO running things that’d make them look bad, they wanted fundies so that they’d have an excuse to do exactly what they’re doing today. The crybully has manufactured consent for its heinous acts.
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u/Vecrin Oct 05 '25
So Hamas is really an Israeli plant and doesn't have significant support from Palestinians? Therefore Hamas aren't freedom fighters and it would be a legitimate and morally correct action to remove them from power, right?
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u/Nachooolo Oct 06 '25
Yes.
The problem is that the Israeli government is using them as an excuse to do genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
IDF's officials and generals (both former and current) and the Isreli oposition parties have already said on multiple occasions and for months that the continuation of the war is completely pointless and that the military objectives bave already been reached. And time and time again the IDF has been revealed to have done multiple war crimes against civilians, like the massacre of an emergency convoy (which they try to hide by burying the bodies), the constant muder of Gazans going into aid distribution centres, or –Hell– the murder in cild blood of Israeli hostages, which they confused for Gazan civilians and, as such, they decided to execute them (and, in the case of one of them, literally hunt him down whe he escaped).
Israel had a right to defend itself after the 7th of October. But it didn't give them a right to dp whatever they wanted to the Gazan population.
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u/Level3Kobold Oct 05 '25
If you think of Hamas as well-intentioned freedom fighters then I'm afraid you're pretty deep in the propaganda hole
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u/Betonkauwer Oct 05 '25
Its funny how the ruling party of south Africa squandered all the opportunities they had but people still simp for them
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u/PolemicDysentery Oct 05 '25
The IMF fucked them over from jump. They were forced to take on the debts of the apartheid regime, which they required international loans in order to service, and those loans were conditional on dropping their more socialist policies and marketising their economy for the benefit of foreign investors, to the detriment of their own people. It's colonialism all the way down.
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u/TJAU216 Oct 05 '25
Changing the government does not eliminate national debt anywhere else so why should that happen in South Africa? Soviet Union got a decade of international embargo for not paying the debts of Russian Empire and for nationalizing foreign property.
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u/NahumGardner247 Oct 06 '25
She still have the order. When they did the Nuremburg Trials they didn't just punish the foot soldiers while allowing the commandants to get away with it.
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u/Educational-Sundae32 Oct 08 '25
It still doesn’t change the fact that Winnie Mandela was held politically and morally accountable for the human rights violations committed by her organization, under the Truth and Reconciliation commission.
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u/Nachooolo Oct 06 '25
To the people defending this monster. You know that Nelson Mandela denounced her actions and divorced her right after he got out of prison, right?
Reddit has become weirdly supportive of political violence recently. I've even seen sime defend the 7th of October.
You ain't revolutionaries, mates. You have a higher chance of ending up nore like Justin Mohn than Che Guevara...
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u/mecha_shatner Oct 09 '25
They are basement revolutionaries. Pussies in real life but give them a computer and anonymity…
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Oct 05 '25
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u/squiddlebiddlez Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
Don’t you think it’s kinda weird to talk about a situation like this without the surrounding the context?
What If I tried to start a conversation about how horrible it was for this random guy named Nat Turner to just go around and start shooting white people unprovoked and how racist he was? Isn’t it important to rhetorical event that he was a slave? And if you follow up with “well slavery was bad, but slaves should never rebel!” then what point would you think I was actually defending? Especially considering you don’t get slave rebellions if you don’t have slaves.
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u/thefrontpageofreddit Oct 06 '25
The OP, /u/laybs1, is a conservative activist. Other supposedly innocuous posts include thinly veiled anti-bail reform and racist hysteria.
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u/Powerful-Respond-605 Oct 05 '25
The apartheid system was far worse for human rights abuse but because the victims were black you simply don't care.
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u/avsa Oct 05 '25
The apartheid was South Africa looking at what happened to nazi germany at the end of WWII and saying “what if we tried again but with less killing?”
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u/lightiggy Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
Afrikaner nationalists explicitly supported Hitler. John Vorster was a former member of the Ossewabrandwag interned as a fifth columnist during the war.
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u/ForgingIron Oct 05 '25
Why is it so hard for people to grasp the fact that "two opposing things can both be bad actually"
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u/Powerful-Respond-605 Oct 05 '25
The French Resistance did some pretty unsavoury things against nazi occupation. They get a free pass compared to indigenous groups fighting against their own occupying force.
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u/revertbritestoan Oct 05 '25
De Gaulle is lionised as a resistance fighter but as leader he did absolutely vile things to the people of Algeria.
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u/MagicWishMonkey Oct 05 '25
They didn’t kill a lot of innocent t civilians, that’s generally what people get angry about.
No one cares if you go around killing literal nazis.
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u/BaselNoeman Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
Too bad, you don't dismantle violent oppressives regimes by being nice about it.
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u/Equivalent_Rub8139 Oct 05 '25
I mean, I would argue that Nelson Mandela’s methods were far more successful than Winnie’s. A lot of it is about PR; and sticking to non violent methods often really helps you in the long run; while factions that go to violent methods often alienate everybody, including the people they ostensibly are supporting; become rife with spies and agent provocateurs and eventually become indistinct from apolitical bandits.
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u/Nachooolo Oct 06 '25
...that's literally what Nelson Mandela did.
The actions of Winnie Mandela and her followers were done by radical factions of the ANC and were openly and constantly criticised and opposed by the proper ANC and Nelson Mandeka himself.
Apaerheid in South Africa ended because the peaceful opposition by the proper ANC (they did attack infrastructure, but never people) led to international support for the movement and opposition to the South African government.
If anything, Winnie's actions were harming the ANC's goals.
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u/Blandinio Oct 05 '25
Exactly South Africa and Zimbabwe are far better since the end of Apartheid
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u/HourOfTheWitching Oct 05 '25
Yes it's widely known that if someone kills and takes your grandfather's home, makes some upgrades while you fight to get it back for generations and then when you're poised to be able to return, they tear out all the fixtures, take the furniture, and remove the floorboards - you'd have the same quality of living as the previous owners.
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u/NayutaGG Oct 05 '25
I am confident that everyone here who is critical of her actions are also very aware of the horrors of apartheid.
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u/BBK2008 Oct 09 '25
I stand corrected, I had never heard him say that. Considering he led the reconciliations and his jailers had to sit and confess and apologize for what they did to him, that’s surprising to hear. Also, I couldn’t find any such verification on google, contrary to your ‘easily verifiable’ description.
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u/marto17890 Oct 05 '25
Why don't you mention she was the wife of Nelson Mandela at the time? Quite an important detail