Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid leader who spent twenty-seven years in prison and became the country's first Black president in 1994. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk for the negotiations that ended apartheid 1.

Born into a Thembu royal family in the Eastern Cape, he trained as a lawyer and joined the African National Congress in 1944. After the ANC was banned in 1960 he helped found its armed wing, was convicted of sabotage and conspiracy, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 2.

Released in 1990 amid domestic and international pressure, he led the ANC through four years of negotiation and then governed a single term, retiring in 1999. He died at ninety-five and is widely remembered as an emblem of reconciliation 3.

Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in Mvezo, a village in the Transkei, into the Thembu royal house. His father, a local chief, died when he was nine, and he was raised under the guardianship of the regent of the Thembu, who sent him to Methodist schools and then to Fort Hare University College 4.

He was expelled from Fort Hare in 1940 after a student protest and moved to Johannesburg in 1941, where he worked as a mine guard and then as a law clerk. He completed a BA by correspondence and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he met Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. In 1944 he joined the African National Congress 1.

The ANC of the 1940s was cautious and petition-driven; Mandela and other young members founded the Youth League to push for mass action. The National Party's election in 1948 installed the system of apartheid, and the ANC responded with a Programme of Action in 1949 5.

The Defiance Campaign of 1952, in which volunteers broke discriminatory laws, brought the ANC a mass following and Mandela a suspended sentence. He and Oliver Tambo opened a law practice in Johannesburg, one of the few firms serving Black clients. In 1955 the Congress of the People adopted the Freedom Charter, and in 1956 Mandela was charged in the Treason Trial, which ended with acquittals in 1961 4.

After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the banning of the ANC, Mandela concluded that non-violent protest could not end apartheid. He helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing, which began a campaign of sabotage in December 1961, and travelled abroad for military training and diplomatic support 2.

He was arrested in August 1962 and sentenced to five years for incitement. In July 1963 police raided Liliesleaf Farm, where documents and weapons were found, and he became the first accused in the Rivonia Trial. In a statement from the dock in April 1964 he argued that the struggle was against a system rather than a race, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment that June 1.

Mandela served eighteen years on Robben Island, quarrying limestone and studying by correspondence, and was moved to Pollsmoor Prison in 1982 and to Victor Verster in 1988. Conditions improved slowly, and he became the effective leader of the imprisoned ANC, negotiating with prison authorities and, from 1985, with the government 4.

He refused repeated offers of conditional release that would have required him to renounce armed struggle, and his refusal became a symbol of the movement's insistence on unconditional negotiation. On 11 February 1990 he walked out of Victor Verster, nine days after the ANC was unbanned 1.

The four years after his release were a period of negotiation and violence. Mandela and de Klerk met repeatedly; the Convention for a Democratic South Africa opened in 1991 and was suspended more than once. In 1993 the two men received the Nobel Peace Prize, and in April 1994 the country held its first election with universal suffrage 6.

The ANC won a majority, and Mandela was inaugurated on 10 May 1994. His presidency emphasised reconciliation: he endorsed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which heard testimony about crimes committed by both sides, and he used sporting occasions, notably the 1995 Rugby World Cup, to reach across the racial divide. He retired in 1999 1.

Mandela's moral authority rested on the coherence of his public life: the prison years made his later calls for forgiveness credible, and he avoided the personal enrichment that marked some successors. He remained a critic of inequality and, in later years, of the ANC's failures, while campaigning on HIV/AIDS and children's rights 3.

He died on 5 December 2013 at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg, aged ninety-five. Statues, streets, and institutions across the world carry his name, but the policies of post-apartheid South Africa remain contested, and the gap between his symbolic stature and the country's condition is a continuing theme of commentary 4.