Rick Santorum said Thursday that Nelson Mandela had fought against “some great injustice” — apartheid — just as Republicans are fighting against the great injustice of Obamacare.

“He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives — and Obamacare is front and center in that,” Santorum said Thursday in an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News.

O’Reilly had opened the conversation by saying that, though Mandela was a “communist,” he was still “a great man. What he did for his people was stunning,” continuing that he was still able to respect him despite their different political views. O’Reilly then asked Santorum why the Republican Party wasn’t able to resolve its ideological differences with the same respect.

“Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that, and that’s the reason he’s mourned today,” Santorum said. “But you’re right, what he was advocating for wasn’t necessarily the right answer.”

He then compared Mandela’s decades-long struggle against apartheid with the Republican effort to stop Obamacare.

The full video is below.

h/t Mediate