Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist who led the country from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black president and the first to be elected in a democratic election with full representation. His dialogues with South African President F.W. de Klerk in the early 1990s helped bring the country's apartheid system to an end and pave the way for a peaceful transition to majority rule. For their efforts, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. His government aimed to undo apartheid's legacy by combating institutionalised racism and promoting racial reconciliation. From 1991 to 1997, he was also the president of the African National Congress (ANC).

 

• On July 18, 1918, Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in the village of Mvezo in the Eastern Cape. Nonqaphi Nosekeni was his mother and his father was Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo.

• When Rolihlahla's father died, he was 12 years old and he became a ward of Jongintaba at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni.

• He dreamed of contributing to his people's freedom struggle after hearing the "stories of his ancestors' valour during the resistance wars."

• As a child, he witnessed the white South African government impose severe restrictions on a black majority that was already oppressed, subjugated, and uneducated.

• He enrolled in primary school in Qunu, where his teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave him the name Nelson, as is customary for all school children to be given “Christian” names.

• Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University College of Fort Hare, but was expelled after participating in a student protest there.

• After graduating from the University of South Africa with a law degree, he became even more aware of the injustices and atrocities perpetrated in the name of apartheid. He took part in a strike with Oliver Tombo when he was twenty-nine years old in 1940, and helped organise the ANC Youth League in 1944.

• With fellow ANC leader Oliver Tambo, Mandela founded South Africa's first Black law firm in Johannesburg in 1952, specialising in cases arising from the country's post-apartheid legislation.

• That year, Mandela was a key figure in the launch of a defiance campaign against South Africa's pass laws, which required non-whites to carry documents (known as passes, pass books, or reference books) authorising their presence in areas deemed "restricted" by the government (i.e., generally reserved for the white population).

• As part of the campaign, he went on a nationwide tour to drum up support for nonviolent protests against discriminatory laws.

• He was a co-author of the Freedom Charter, a document that called for non-racial social democracy in South Africa, in 1955.

 

• Following the police massacre of unarmed Black South Africans in Sharpeville in 1960, and the ANC's subsequent ban, Mandela abandoned his nonviolent stance and began advocating acts of sabotage against the South African regime.

• He went underground (earning the moniker "Black Pimpernel" for his ability to elude capture) and was a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"), the ANC's military wing.

• He went to Algeria in 1962 for guerrilla warfare and sabotage training before returning to South Africa later that year.

• Shortly after his return, on August 5, Mandela was arrested at a roadblock in Natal and sentenced to five years in prison.

• The infamous Rivonia Trial, named after a fashionable suburb of Johannesburg where raiding police discovered quantities of arms and equipment at the headquarters of the underground Umkhonto we Sizwe, saw Mandela and several other men tried for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy in October 1963.

• Nelson Mandela's speech from the dock, in which he admitted some of the charges levelled against him were true, was a classic defence of liberty and defiance of tyranny. (His speech drew international attention and acclaim and was published later that year as I Am Prepared to Die.) 

• He was sentenced to life in prison on June 12, 1964, narrowly avoiding the death penalty.

 

• Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town, from 1964 to 1982.

• He was then held at the maximum-security Pollsmoor Prison until 1988, when he was transferred to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl after being treated for tuberculosis.

• The South African government made conditional offers of freedom to Mandela on several occasions, most notably in 1976, on the condition that he recognise the Transkei Bantustan's newly independent—and highly contentious—status and agree to reside there.

• In 1985, he accepted an offer that required him to abstain from using violence.

• Mandela turned down both offers, the second on the grounds that such negotiations could only be conducted by free men, and he was not a free man as a prisoner.

• Throughout his imprisonment, Mandela had widespread support among South Africa's black population, and his detention became a cause célèbre for the international community, which condemned apartheid.

• As South Africa's political situation deteriorated after 1983, particularly after 1988, he was engaged in exploratory negotiations by ministers in President P.W. Botha's government; he met with Botha's successor, F.W. de Klerk, in December 1989.

• On February 11, 1990, President de Klerk of South Africa released Nelson Mandela from prison.

• Shortly after his release, Mandela was elected deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC); he was elected president in July 1991. Mandela led the African National Congress (ANC) in negotiations with de Klerk to bring an end to apartheid and a peaceful transition to non-racial democracy in South Africa.

• WALK TO FREEDOM – He published his autobiography in 1994,.

• In 1993, Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa."

 

• The Mandela-led African National Congress (ANC) won South Africa's first universal suffrage elections in April 1994, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as president of the country's first multiethnic government.

• He established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1995 to investigate human rights violations committed during apartheid, and he introduced housing, education, and economic development initiatives to help the country's Black population improve their living standards.

• He oversaw the adoption of a new democratic constitution in 1996. In December 1997, Mandela resigned from the ANC, handing over the reins of the party to Thabo Mbeki, his chosen successor. Mandela and Madikizela-Mandela divorced in 1996, and in 1998, he married GracaMachel, the widow of former Mozambican president and Frelimo leader SamoraMachel.

• Mandela did not seek re-election to a second term as president of South Africa, and was succeeded by Mbeki in 1999. Mandela retired from active politics after leaving office, but he remained a strong international advocate for peace, reconciliation, and social justice, often through the work of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which he founded in 1999.

• He was a founding member of the Elders, an international group of leaders formed in 2007 to promote conflict resolution and problem solving around the world.

• In honour of Mandela's 90th birthday, several celebrations were held in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and other countries in 2008.

• Nelson Mandela died on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95, after a long-term respiratory infection.

 

• As an activist and a prisoner, he was acutely aware of his moral and political responsibilities as a man on the path to greatness.

• As a political and moral leader, he enabled humanity to extend and expand our capacity to rethink politics in terms of empathy ethics, forgiveness politics, and a values revolution.

• South Africa's democratic transition, led by Nelson Mandela, was a brilliant display of political ingenuity and moral foresight.

• Based on Mandela's life and work, freedom cannot be speechless, whereas violence is incapable of speech.

• His excellence politics and moral capital are more relevant than ever to all those who believe in the nonviolent pursuit of public happiness and peace-making governance.