While many prisoners refused to talk to their guards, Mandela tried to analyze their situation. He realized that the Afrikaners' behavior was driven by a rabid fear. If the black population came to power, he believed this could lead to genocide. Mandela used his years of incarceration to learn the history of the Afrikaners and their language, Afrikaans . This allowed him to understand their mentality and to enter into dialogue. Unlike the ANC, which viewed the occupation of southern Africa by whites as a modern version of European colonialism, Mandela also saw the Afrikaners as rightful inhabitants of (South) Africa. He realized that he might have made the same drastic decisions in the same situation