Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela , 1918-, South African statesman. He earned (1942) a law degree from the Univ. of South Africa and was prominent in Johannesburg's youth wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1952 he became ANC deputy national president, advocating nonviolent resistance to apartheid . However, after a group of peaceful demonstrators were massacred (1960) in Sharpeville, Mandela organized a paramilitary branch of the ANC to carry out guerrilla warfare against the white government. After being acquitted (1962) on charges of treason, he was arrested (1964) and convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life in prison, where he became the leading symbol of South Africa's oppressed black majority. Released in 1990 as an expression of President de Klerk 's committment to change, Mandela was elected (July, 1991) ANC president after a triumphal global tour. He represented the ANC in the turbulent negotiations that led to establishment of majority rule. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1993. In South Africa's first multiracial elections (1994), Mandela was elected president, and served until 1999, when Thabo Mbeki succeeded him. In Dec., 1999, Mandela was appointed by a group of African nations to mediate the ethnic strife in Burundi ; the Arusha accords, a Tutsi-Hutu power-sharing agreement, were finalized in 2001.

He married his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, 1936?-, b. Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela, in 1958. A social worker, she joined the ANC and was her husband's champion while he was in prison, being herself imprisoned and "banned" several times. In 1991 she was convicted in the 1988 kidnapping and beating of four young men, one of whom died, but on appeal her prison sentence was reduced to a fine. Her brief tenure (1994-95) as a deputy minister in her husband's cabinet was turbulent. The Mandelas separated in 1992 and were divorced in 1996. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela remained head of the ANC Women's League and a member of parliament, but she resigned those positions in 2003 when she was convicted on charges of theft and fraud relating to her involvement in a scheme to obtain loans for nonexistent Women's League employees. Her theft conviction was overturned and her prison sentence suspended on appeal in 2004.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1994); biographies by M. Meredith (1998), A. Sampson (1999), and T. Lodge (2007).

Mandela, Nelson (Rolihlahla) (1918– ) South African statesman, President (1994–99). From his twenties he was an activist for the African National Congress (ANC); he was first jailed in 1962 and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. His authority as a moderate leader of black South Africans did not diminish while he was in detention, and he became a symbol of the struggle against apartheid. On his release in 1990 Mandela resumed his leadership of the ANC, and engaged in talks with President F. W. de Klerk on the introduction of majority rule. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with President de Klerk in 1993, and in the country's first democratic elections was elected President the following year. He subsequently became a much loved and respected international statesman.

Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla (1918– ) South African statesman, president (1994–99). He joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944, and for the next 20 years led the campaign of civil disobedience against South Africa's apartheid government. Following the Sharpeville Massacre (1960), Mandela formed Umkhonte We Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), a paramilitary wing of the ANC. In 1961, the ANC was banned. In 1962, Mandela was acquitted on charges of treason, but in 1964 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for political offences. He spent the next 27 years in prison on Robben Island, becoming a symbol of resistance to apartheid. International sanctions forced F. W. de Klerk to begin the dismantling of apartheid. In February 1990, Mandela was released and resumed his leadership of the newly legalized ANC. In 1993, he and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1994, Mandela gained two-thirds of the popular vote in South Africa's first multiracial democratic elections. An advocate of the need for reconciliation, he made de Klerk deputy president (1994–96) in his government of national unity. In 1996, he divorced his wife, Winnie (1934– ), who was convicted of kidnapping and of being an accessory to assault. Thabo Mbeki succeeded Mandela as president.

http://www.anc.org.za/people/mandela.html; http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/1993