The South African activist and former president Nelson Mandela (1918- ) helped bring an end to apartheid and has been a global advocate for human rights. A member of the African National Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he was a leader of both peaceful protests and armed resistance against the white minority’s oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa. His actions landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the antiapartheid movement both within his country and internationally. Released in 1990, he participated in the eradication of apartheid and in 1994 became the first black president of South Africa, forming a multiethnic government to oversee the country’s transition. Since retiring from politics in 1999, he has remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own nation and around the world.
Nelson Mandela's Childhood and Education
Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, into a
royal family of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe in the South African village of
Mvezo, where his father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (c. 1880-1928), served as
chief. His mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of Mphakanyiswa’s four wives,
who together bore him nine daughters and four sons. After the death of his
father in 1927, 9-year-old Mandela—then known by his birth name, Rolihlahla—was
adopted by Jongintaba Dalindyebo, a high-ranking Thembu regent who began
grooming his young ward for a role within the tribal leadership.
The first in his family to receive a formal
education, Mandela completed his primary studies at a local missionary school.
There, a teacher dubbed him Nelson as part of a common practice of giving
African students English names. He went on to attend the Clarkebury Boarding
Institute and Healdtown, a Methodist secondary school, where he excelled in
boxing and track as well as academics. In 1939 Mandela entered the elite
University of Fort Hare, the only Western-style higher learning institute for
South African blacks at the time. The following year, he and several other
students, including his friend and future business partner Oliver Tambo
(1917-1993), were sent home for participating in a boycott against university
policies.
After learning that his guardian had arranged a
marriage for him, Mandela fled to Johannesburg and worked first as a night
watchman and then as a law clerk while completing his bachelor’s degree by
correspondence. He studied law at the University of Witwatersrand, where he
became involved in the movement against racial discrimination and forged key
relationships with black and white activists. In 1944, Mandela joined the
African National Congress (ANC) and worked with fellow party members, including
Oliver Tambo, to establish its youth league, the ANCYL. That same year, he met
and married his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase (1922-2004), with whom he had
four children before their divorce in 1957.
Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress
Nelson Mandela’s commitment to politics and the
ANC grew stronger after the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated
National Party, which introduced a formal system of racial classification and
segregation—apartheid—that restricted nonwhites’ basic rights and barred them
from government while maintaining white minority rule. The following year, the
ANC adopted the ANCYL’s plan to achieve full citizenship for all South Africans
through boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and other nonviolent methods.
Mandela helped lead the ANC’s 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws,
traveling across the country to organize protests against discriminatory
policies, and promoted the manifesto known as the Freedom Charter, ratified by
the Congress of the People in 1955. Also in 1952, Mandela and Tambo opened
South Africa’s first black law firm, which offered free or low-cost legal
counsel to those affected by apartheid legislation.
On December 5, 1956, Mandela and 155 other
activists were arrested and went on trial for treason. All of the defendants
were acquitted in 1961, but in the meantime tensions within the ANC escalated,
with a militant faction splitting off in 1959 to form the Pan Africanist
Congress (PAC). The next year, police opened fire on peaceful black protesters
in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people; as panic, anger and riots
swept the country in the massacre’s aftermath, the apartheid government banned
both the ANC and the PAC. Forced to go underground and wear disguises to evade
detection, Mandela decided that the time had come for a more radical approach
than passive resistance.
Nelson Mandela and the Armed Resistance Movement
In 1961, Nelson Mandela co-founded and became the
first leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), also known as MK, a
new armed wing of the ANC. Several years later, during the trial that would put
him behind bars for nearly three decades, he described the reasoning for this
radical departure from his party’s original tenets: “[I]t would be wrong and
unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and nonviolence at
a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only
when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred
to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political
struggle.”
Under Mandela’s leadership, MK launched a
sabotage campaign against the government, which had recently declared South
Africa a republic and withdrawn from the British Commonwealth. In January 1962,
Mandela traveled abroad illegally to attend a conference of African nationalist
leaders in Ethiopia, visit the exiled Oliver Tambo in London and undergo
guerilla training in Algeria. On August 5, shortly after his return, he was
arrested and subsequently sentenced to five years in prison for leaving the
country and inciting a 1961 workers’ strike. The following July, police raided
an ANC hideout in Rivonia, a suburb on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and
arrested a racially diverse group of MK leaders who had gathered to debate the
merits of a guerilla insurgency. Evidence was found implicating Mandela and
other activists, who were brought to stand trial for sabotage, treason and
violent conspiracy alongside their associates.
Mandela and seven other defendants narrowly
escaped the gallows and were instead sentenced to life imprisonment during the
so-called Rivonia Trial, which lasted eight months and attracted substantial
international attention. In a stirring opening statement that sealed his iconic
status around the world, Mandela admitted to some of the charges against him
while defending the ANC’s actions and denouncing the injustices of apartheid.
He ended with the following words: “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.”
Nelson Mandela's Years Behind Bars
“Nelson
Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island
Prison, a former leper colony off the coast of Cape Town, where he was confined
to a small cell without a bed or plumbing and compelled to do hard labor in a
lime quarry.
As a black political prisoner, he received scantier rations and
fewer privileges than other inmates. He was only allowed to see his wife,
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (1936- ), who he had married in 1958 and was the
mother of his two young daughters, once every six months. Mandela and his
fellow prisoners were routinely subjected to inhumane punishments for the
slightest of offenses; among other atrocities, there were reports of guards
burying inmates in the ground up to their necks and urinating on them.”
These restrictions and conditions
notwithstanding, while in confinement Mandela earned a bachelor of law degree
from the University of London and served as a mentor to his fellow prisoners,
encouraging them to seek better treatment through nonviolent resistance. He
also smuggled out political statements and a draft of his autobiography, “Long
Walk to Freedom,” published five years after his release.
Despite his forced retreat from the spotlight,
Mandela remained the symbolic leader of the antiapartheid movement. In 1980
Oliver Tambo introduced a “Free Nelson Mandela” campaign that made the jailed
leader a household name and fueled the growing international outcry against
South Africa’s racist regime. As pressure mounted, the government offered
Mandela his freedom in exchange for various political compromises, including
the renouncement of violence and recognition of the “independent” Transkei
Bantustan, but he categorically rejected these deals.
In 1982 Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on
the mainland, and in 1988 he was placed under house arrest on the grounds of a
minimum-security correctional facility. The following year, newly elected
president F. W. de Klerk (1936-) lifted the ban on the ANC and called for a
nonracist South Africa, breaking with the conservatives in his party. On
February 11, 1990, he ordered Mandela’s release.
Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa
After attaining his freedom, Nelson Mandela led
the ANC in its negotiations with the governing National Party and various other
South African political organizations for an end to apartheid and the establishment
of a multiracial government. Though fraught with tension and conducted against
a backdrop of political instability, the talks earned Mandela and de Klerk the
Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993. On April 26, 1994, more than 22 million
South Africans turned out to cast ballots in the country's first multiracial
parliamentary elections in history. An overwhelming majority chose the ANC to
lead the country, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as the first black
president of South Africa, with de Klerk serving as his first deputy.
As president, Mandela established the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights and political violations
committed by both supporters and opponents of apartheid between 1960 and 1994.
He also introduced numerous social and economic programs designed to improve
the living standards of South Africa's black population. In 1996 Mandela
presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution, which
established a strong central government based on majority rule and prohibited
discrimination against minorities, including whites.
Improving race relations, discouraging blacks
from retaliating against the white minority and building a new international
image of a united South Africa were central to President Mandela’s agenda. To
these ends, he formed a multiracial “Government of National Unity” and
proclaimed the country a “rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.”
In a gesture seen as a major step toward reconciliation, he encouraged blacks
and whites alike to rally around the predominantly Afrikaner national rugby
team when South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
On his 80th birthday in 1998, Mandela wed the
politician and humanitarian Graça Machel (1945-) widow of the former president
of Mozambique. (His marriage to Winnie had ended in divorce in 1992.) The
following year, he retired from politics at the end of his first term as
president and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki (1942-) of the ANC.
Nelson Mandela's Later Years and Legacy
Since leaving office, Nelson Mandela has remained
a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own country and around
the world. He has established a number of organizations, including the
influential Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Elders, an independent group of
public figures committed to addressing global problems and easing human
suffering. In 2002, Mandela became a vocal advocate of AIDS awareness and
treatment programs in a culture where the epidemic had been cloaked in stigma
and ignorance. The disease later claimed the life of his son Makgatho
(1950-2005) and is believed to affect more people in South Africa than in any
other country.
Treated for prostate cancer in 2001 and weakened
by other health issues, Mandela has grown frail in recent years and scaled back
his schedule of public appearances. In 2009, the United Nations declared July
18 “Nelson Mandela International Day” in recognition of the South African
leader’s contributions to democracy, freedom, peace and human rights around the
world.
Lessons
to learn from biography of this great Africa legend
“This man was born by people of non
feasible political history, had former education by accident, notice
irregularities in political governance in his home country and decide to put
forward his life, career, and freedom for 28yrs to liberate his own people”
However, the question
we need to ask ourselves today is that how many present African leaders can
make this sacrifice for their own people, to relieve them of their suffering? Today,
South Africa is one of the happiest nations in the world due to liberation that
this single man has brought to his father land. Remember, his pursuit or
political struggle that lead him to jail is not for personal political gain
like what we have all over African today. How many current African leaders can
sacrifice the three most important things in life to set freedom for their own people?
I mean, sacrificing their life, freedom, career for peoples freedom
Although, he was made
president shortly after he was released from prison, and yet he spent a single
tenure in the office to allow others to drive the country economy. “This is strange of typical Africa politician, as most
African leaders that sacrifice nothing to get to power don’t want to leave
office even after their tenure expires”. It is high time politician seeking
political power understand that, the desire to help suffering citizen come
before seeking crude means to gain political popularity”
The third lesion to learn from Mandela political
history is his voluntary
retirement from public life… in my own personal opinion , this man is
such a selfless man who do not sees the position of power as a significance unlike most
African leaders that after forcefully withdraw from active political life still
parade themselves as political godfather and dictatorship. The
mission of Mandela is accompanish on South Africans nation and today, South
African citizen are full of appreciation to this selfless world leader.
However, for all present and past so called African politician what history
have you made for yourself or for those still in power what will your country
men and women write about you when your own time comes? I think you have the correct
answers already!
The last lesson to learn from this great man of
icon in African politics is his integrity, despite his entire struggle till
date, we have never had of his involvement in any
form of corruption and mismanagement of his country resources neither his
investment all over the countries of the world. Hence, who can beat the
record of this great man among all those that parade the corridor of power
today not only in the shore of Africa but all over the world at large?
Therefore, I do not know how to describe this man
but all what I know is that he his also a human being like other Africa leaders
and the world at large with brain, blood and flesh who decide to put his life
on lifeline to sacrifice for the freedom of his people.
“I think Nelson Mandela
should be immortalized all over the world and his name should be kept in a separate
book of history as a distinguished ever live world leader! RIP Nelson we believe the whole human race will miss you. Adieu baba!
Courtesy of Campaign for New Nigeria Media Group
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