Nelson Mandela

Early life

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 at Mvezo in what is now the Eastern Cape. His father, Hendry Mphakanyiswa, was a Thembu chief. Mandela studied at the University College of Fort Hare and read law at the University of the Witwatersrand, going on to become one of South Africa's first Black lawyers.

The ANC and the turn to armed struggle

Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1944 and in 1951 was elected president of its Youth League. After the National Party came to power in 1948 and began building apartheid, he became one of the leading organizers of resistance. From 1956 to 1961 he was a defendant in the long Treason Trial, which ended in acquittal.

The Sharpeville Massacre of March 1960 and the banning of the ANC that followed convinced Mandela and others that peaceful protest alone had been closed off. In June 1961 he proposed a military wing to the ANC leadership. Chief Albert Luthuli accepted a compromise: the new body would be separate from, but under the overall control of, the ANC, whose official policy remained non-violent. Mandela and Joe Slovo were tasked with forming its high command.

Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"), known as MK, launched on 16 December 1961 with a campaign of sabotage against government installations. According to South African History Online, members were instructed to avoid attacks that would injure or kill people. In his statement at the Rivonia Trial, Mandela explained that the founders had weighed sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and open revolution and chose sabotage first, aiming at targets such as power plants and rail and telephone links.

Trial and imprisonment

Mandela was arrested in August 1962 and sentenced to five years with hard labour. He was then tried with other ANC and MK leaders at the Rivonia Trial on charges of plotting to overthrow the government by violence. In his 20 April 1964 statement from the dock he admitted helping found MK and set out his reasons, closing with the line "it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." On 12 June 1964 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

He was held on Robben Island until 1982 and then at Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland. In all he spent 27 years in prison.

Negotiation and presidency

President F. W. de Klerk released Mandela on 11 February 1990. In 1991 he was elected ANC president at the organization's first national conference inside South Africa since its banning. Mandela and de Klerk shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their work toward ending apartheid peacefully and laying the foundations of a democratic South Africa.

After the country's first democratic elections on 27 April 1994, which the ANC won, Mandela became president, serving until 1999.

Legacy

Mandela died in Johannesburg on 5 December 2013. His life spans both chapters of the struggle. He helped launch armed resistance when legal protest was blocked, endured nearly three decades in prison, and then helped lead a negotiated transition to majority rule.