who is a 'terrorist'?

The African National Congress (ANC) was designated as a terrorist organisation by South Africa's old apartheid regime and its supporters.

South Africa's apartheid government banned the ANC in 1960, imprisoning or forcing into exile its leaders.

The ANC's armed wing, uMkhontho weSizwe, which was set up after the ANC was banned in South Africa in 1960.

Mr Mandela, who turns 90 this year, was released in 1990 after spending 27 years in prison.

He then became the country's first post-apartheid-era president, before retiring after serving one term in office.

However, Nelson Mandela and other members of the African National Congress remain on the US terrorist watchlist.
ANC members who wish to travel to the USA have to get waivers from the State Department.
The former South African Ambassador to the USA was flagged and delayed when she attempted to visit a dying cousin -- by the time the red-tape had been cut, her cousin was dead.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, is pushing a bill that would remove current and former ANC leaders from the watch lists. Supporters hope to get it passed before Mandela's 90th birthday July 18.

"What an indignity," Berman said. "The ANC set an important example: It successfully made the change from armed struggle to peace. We should celebrate the transformation."
                           
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Few politicians in recent Irish history have divided opinion as much as Gerry Adams. To his followers, he is regarded as one of the best leaders the republican movement has ever had.
To his fiercest unionist opponents, he is at best little more than an apologist for IRA gunmen, and at worst, a member of its highest command.

Interned by the British government in 1971 his voice was not allowed to be broadcast in the UK.

'I will never sit down with Gerry Adams ... He'd sit with anyone. He'd sit down with the devil. In fact, Adams does sit down with the devil.'
Ian Paisley quoted in The Independent, February 13 1997

In 2007 Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sat side by side to announce they had reached agreement to share power from May 8 in a devolved Northern Ireland government.

The accord between the veteran unionist firebrand and the leader of a militant republican movement that once killed opponents was hailed in London and Dublin as the defining moment.

With goodwill and mutual understanding equality and reconciliation IS possible the strategy is to reduce the grievances that fuel violence - step one in this journey is to acknowledge them.