I’m not sure what your definition of a saint is. My religion doesn’t have them, but what hero was perfect? certainly not the founding fathers of the US, yet, look what they accomplished. In the end, Mandela defied his own nature. If his nature was to be a terrorist, it wasn’t terrorism that won the day, it was his appeal to the conscience of the civilized world, which was the same sort of appeal made by Martin Luther King.
A rather odd victory, considering the violence, terroristic practices of the Mandela administration and his ANC. The violence perpetrated by Mandela was on-par with that used by the apartheid regime before. Indeed, in some ways, it was worse - as it was primarily carried out on HIS OWN PEOPLE.
There are many "tragic heroes" in history - those who made bad decisions, even things that ended their leadership early (and their lives). Many engaged in things that any decent person would cringe at. But few were as contrary as Mandela - the many who spoke about love, forgiveness and moving forward, while carrying out the most vile acts against his own political opponents.
As far as I'm concerned, Mandela died with a lot of blood on his hands and he is no hero.
Oh - and regardless of ones view of MLK - I am unaware of him every using or endorsing mass violence against his opposition.