The most common misconception about Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is most famous for being the South African leader who ended Apartheid and became the president of the country for five years.

He is, in a way, also somewhat famous in an ancillary way for the so-called "Mandela effect", named after him, and that's the misconception that Mandela was imprisoned and died in prison, when in fact he lived for years after (and became the president of the country).

However, that's not the misconception I'm talking about here.

The misconception, by far and large more common than "he died in prison", is that he was a pacifist, and that he ended Apertheid and became the president of the country through extreme pacifism.

This couldn't be farther from the truth.

In actual reality Nelson Mandela was a violent Communist revolutionary who advocated for and associated with other violent revolutionaries, most of them staunch Communists (some of them, in fact, having moved there directly from the Soviet Union). In fact, he even founded a terrorist organization called "The Spear of the Nation" (indeed, the vast, vast majority of people do not know this, have no idea what kind of organization that was, and would be highly surprised to learn that not only was it an extremely violent terrorist organization but in fact was directly founded by Mandela himself.)

And no, that organization did not perform terrorist attacks only against the government and law enforcement. They organized many terrorist attacks against civilians. They were Communist terrorists of the worst kind. 

Many people have heard that he was imprisoned (mainly because they have heard of "the Mandela Effect"), but they have no idea why he was imprisoned. Most people would probably make a wild guess that he was wrongfully imprisoned because the South African government didn't like his pacifist protests and that he was getting way too popular.

In actual reality he was imprisoned because of having organized terrorist attacks and violence.

Yet, the misconception that he was an utter pacifist still persists and is extremely widespread.

What I believe is happening here is that people are confusing him with Mahatma Gandhi, who is the actual person who is famous for non-violent protest and peaceful revolution, in this case in India.

People are conflating these two people into one, at least in terms of their tactics, and they mistakenly believe that Mandela was a non-violent pacifist, confusing him with Gandhi.