Nelson Mandela was arguably the most respected political leader in the world since WWII. The media is however creating an historical image that is a tame and non threatening image of Mandela that is quite different from the real man. Nelson Mandela was not a pacifists. He was not philosophically aligned with either Ghandi or Martin Luther King. In 1960, after the Sharpville massacre he and his law partner Oliver Tambo formed the Spear of the nation, the armed wing of his formerly non-violent African Nationalist Congress, which was formed four years after the NAACP in 1912. It was patterned after the NAACP. During his 27 year stay, incarcerated at the Robin Island prison, the South African government demanded for years that he renounce violence as a condition of his release. He refused and never relented. Mandela was a man of principle. He brought change by unrelenting determination. As a President he developed the concept of a reconciliation commission where if you admitted your apartheid era crimes you were forgiven. This practice was copied in Argentina and in other countries around the world. Remember that Ronald Reagan vetoed sanctioned on apartheid South Africa and called it's racist government a friend of the U. S.. Congress had to override his veto.