Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela became known and respected all over the world as a symbol of the struggle against apartheid and all forms of racism. Nelson Mandela was born on the 18th July 1918 in the village of Mvezo, which is located in an area of South Africa called Transkei. He was born Rolihlahla, which means "pulling the branch of a tree" – it wasn’t until he was seven that a teacher at school gave him the name ‘Nelson’, in accordance with the custom of giving all school children “Christian” names. His father, Mgadla, was one of the grandsons of Ngubengcuka, a king of the abaThembu and leader of the Madiba clan. When Rolihlahla was twelve years old, his father died, and he ended up being Jongintaba’s ward in the Great Place in Mqhekezweni. Hearing the elders’ stories about his ancestors’ bravery throughout the resistance wars, he wished to contribute to his people’s freedom struggle as well.
After receiving a primary education at a local mission school, he was sent to the Clarkebury Boarding Institute for his Junior Certificate and then to Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of some repute, where he matriculated. Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University College of Fort Hare, in 1940 but did not complete the degree there as he was expelled for joining in a student protest, along with Oliver Tambo. Shortly after his return to the royal homestead, he and his cousin, Justice, ran away to Johannesburg to avoid arranged marriages and for a short period he worked as a mine policeman. Mandela was introduced to Walter Sisulu in 1941 and it was Sisulu who arranged for him to serve his articles at Lazar Sidelsky's law firm.
He completed his BA through the University of South Africa in 1942, and commenced study for his LLB shortly afterwards. He went back to Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943. Rolihlahla entered politics in earnest while studying, and joined the African National Congress (ANC). In 1944, he married Evelyn Mase, a nurse and cousin of Walter Sisulu. Evelyn and Nelson went on to have four children. They divorced in 1958. At the height of the second World War, in 1944, a small group of young Africans who were members of the African National Congress, banded together under the leadership of Anton Lembede. These young people set themselves the formidable task of transforming the ANC into a more radical mass movement.
Their chief contention was that the political tactics of the “old guard” leadership of the ANC, reared in the tradition of constitutionalism and polite petitioning of the government of the day, were proving inadequate to the tasks of national emancipation. The group articulated its dissatisfaction with the way the ANC was being run, critiqued its policy of appeasement. In opposition to the old guard, Lembede and his colleagues espoused a radical African nationalism grounded in the principle of national self-determination. In September 1944 they came together to found the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). Mandela soon impressed his peers by his disciplined work and consistent effort and was elected as the league's national secretary in 1948. Through painstaking work, campaigning at the grass-roots the ANCYL was able to canvass support for its policies among the ANC membership.
In 1948 the South African government introduced a system called ‘apartheid’, which furthered the country’s racial divide even more. Under new racist laws, Black people and White people were forced to lead separate lives. Spurred on by the victory of the National Party, which won the 1948 all-White elections on the platform of apartheid, at the 1949 Annual Conference, the Program of Action, inspired by the Youth League, which advocated the weapons of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-cooperation, was accepted as official ANC policy. In December, Mandela was elected to the National Executive Committee at the National Conference. When the ANC launched its Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws in 1952, Mandela, by then president of the Youth League, was elected national volunteer-in-chief. The campaigns were modelled on the earlier passive resistance campaigns of the 1940s.
The Defiance Campaign was conceived as a mass civil disobedience campaign that would snowball from a core of selected volunteers to involve more and more ordinary people, culminating in mass defiance. Fulfilling his responsibility as volunteer-in-chief, Mandela travelled the country, organizing resistance to discriminatory legislation. Mandela was brought to trial for his role in the campaign, the court found that Mandela and his co-accused had consistently advised their followers to adopt a peaceful course of action and to avoid all violence. For his part in the Defiance Campaign, Mandela was convicted of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act. Mandela, like all the others, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment with hard labor, suspended for three years. Shortly after the campaign ended, he was also prohibited from attending gatherings and confined to Johannesburg for six months.
In August 1952 he and Oliver Tambo established South Africa’s first Black-owned law firm in the 1950s, Mandela & Tambo. Their professional status didn’t earn Mandela and Tambo any personal immunity from the brutal apartheid laws. They fell foul of the land segregation legislation, and the authorities demanded that they move their practice from the city to the back of beyond, as Mandela later put it, “miles away from where clients could reach us during working hours. This was tantamount to asking us to abandon our legal practice, to give up the legal service of our people … No attorney worth his salt would easily agree to do that.” The partnership resolved to defy the law. In 1953 Nelson Mandela was given the responsibility to prepare a plan that would enable the leadership of the movement to maintain dynamic contact with its membership without recourse to public meetings. The objective was to prepare for the possibility that the ANC would, like the Communist Party, be declared illegal and to ensure that the organization would be able to operate from underground.
During the early fifties Mandela played an important part in leading the resistance to the Western Areas removals, and to the introduction of Bantu Education. Throughout the decade, Mandela was the victim of various forms of repression. He was banned, arrested and imprisoned. Mandela was arrested in a countrywide police swoop on December 5th 1956, which led to the 1956 Treason Trial. While Nelson was under arrest the government banned anti-apartheid groups such as the ANC. But that didn’t stop Nelson and his fellow activists. After he and his colleagues were acquitted in the Treason Trial, Mandela went underground and began planning a national strike in late March of 1957. He and Sisulu secretly travelled around the country organizing the strike. After the Sharpeville Massacre on March 21st 1960, the ANC was outlawed, and Mandela, still on trial, was detained, along with hundreds of others. The Treason Trial collapsed in 1961, when Mandela and 29 others were found not guilty, just as South Africa was being steered towards the adoption of a republic. With the ANC now illegal, the leadership picked up the threads from its underground headquarters and Mandela emerged as the leading figure in this new phase of struggle.
Forced to live apart from his family, he and his wife Winnie, (whom he married in June of 1958 by now had 2 daughters) moved from place to place to evade detection by the Government. Mandela rarely saw his family because of his semi-clandestine life. Sometimes dressed as a laborer, at other times as a chauffeur, his successful evasion of the police earned him the title of the Black Pimpernel. He managed to travel around the country and stayed with numerous sympathizers. It was during this time that he, together with other leaders of the ANC, constituted a new section of the liberation movement, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), as an armed nucleus with a view to preparing for armed struggle, with Mandela as its commander-in-chief.
Mandela was instrumental in a number of protest actions and campaigns, including the anti-pass law campaigns. He addressed international audiences and travelled widely to gain support for the struggle against apartheid. In August 1962, he was arrested on his return from a trip to Algeria in Northern Africa, and sentenced to five years in prison. He was transferred to Robben Island in May 1963 only to be brought back to Pretoria again in July. While Mandela was in prison, police raided the underground headquarters of the African National Congress at Lilliesleaf Farm, Rivonia near the city of Johannesburg and arrested central ANC leaders. They found documents belonging to the secret army, as well as weapons. On June 12 1964, Mandela and seven other men were charged for plotting to overthrow the government and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Rivonia Trial, as it came to be known, lasted eight months.
Mandela's statement in court during the trial is a classic in the history of the resistance to apartheid, and has been an inspiration to all who have opposed it. He ended with these words: "I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." From 1964 to 1982 he was confined to the notorious prison island Robben Island. Whilst in exile, he maintained contact with the leadership of the ANC. By the late 1960s, Mandela's fame had been eclipsed by Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Seeing the ANC as ineffectual, the BCM called for militant action, but, following the Soweto uprising of 1976, many BCM activists were imprisoned on Robben Island.
In March 1982, after 18 years, he was suddenly transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town (with Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba and Andrew Mlangeni). Conditions at Pollsmoor were better than at Robben Island. In December 1988 he was moved to the Victor Verster Prison near Paarl after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Throughout his time behind bars, Nelson Mandela didn’t give up on what he believed in. He even refused freedom on two occasions, and instead chose to stand by his principles. During his imprisonment, Mandela became a rallying point for South Africa's oppressed, and the world's most famous political prisoner. Nelson Mandela’s time in prison, which amounted to almost 27 years, was marked by many small and large events which played a crucial part in shaping the personality and attitudes of the man who was to become the first President of a democratic South Africa.
On the 2nd of February 1990, the ANC, the South African Communist Party, the PAC and other anti-apartheid organizations were unbanned. Amid growing domestic and international pressure and fears of racial civil war, the President of South Africa, F. W. de Klerk released him on Sunday, February 11 1990. Mandela immersed himself in official talks with de Klerk, to end White minority rule. He was elected ANC President to replace his ailing friend, Oliver Tambo in 1991. In 1993 Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway on behalf of all South Africans who suffered and sacrificed so much to bring peace to their land. The era of apartheid formally came to an end on April 27th 1994, when Nelson Mandela voted for the first time in his life – along with his people. On the 10th of May 1994 he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected President.
Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one term as President – but for him there has been no real retirement. He set up three foundations bearing his name: The Nelson Mandela Foundation, The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and The Mandela-Rhodes Foundation. Although he retired as President of South Africa, he worked tirelessly, campaigning globally for peace, children and the fight against HIV/Aids in particular. Mandela rose to international prominence during his time in prison in the 1980s, when he emerged as the world’s most renowned political prisoner, an emblem of the anti-apartheid struggle, and an inspiration for millions who believed in the goal of human equality. On December 5th, 2013, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela passed away at his home in Johannesburg, aged 95. By the time of his death, within South Africa, Mandela was widely considered both "the father of the nation", and "the founding father of democracy". He is often cited alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the 20th century's exemplary anti-racist, civil rights activist and anti-colonial leaders.