Mandela himself was arrested in 1960 and would spend five months in prison without being charged with a crime. It was this devastating response to what had been peaceful protests that convinced Mandela that peaceful marches and demonstrations weren’t going to work against such an authoritarian regime. After he got out of jail, he changed his tactics and went underground. He had now been forced to become what he was accused of—a revolutionary figure hellbent on taking down an unjust regime.
