Mandela, Nelson

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Mandela, Nelson

SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICAL ACTIVIST AND PRESIDENT
1918–

A life-long anti apartheid activist in South Africa who eventually rose to become the first democratically elected, and first black, president of South Africa, Nelson Rolihlala (meaning troublemaker) Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, into a home composed of three mud huts in the village of Mvezo. Mandela, descended from Thembu (an important people in South Africa) royal blood, was intended to become a councilor to the Thembu king and spent many of his early years in school. Suspended from Fort Hare University in 1940 for leading a student protest against bad food and facing the unwelcome prospect of an arranged marriage, Mandela and a friend fled to Johannesburg, where he soon started working in a law firm, hoping eventually to become a lawyer.

During the 1940s Mandela became active in the political struggle against apartheid, helping to organize the Youth League, on whose executive committee he sat. The Youth League, which was more militant and racially exclusive than the African National Congress (ANC), propelled the anti-apartheid movement toward more direct confrontation with the apartheid system. Though initially racially exclusivist, it began cooperating with anti-apartheid organizations of other races in 1947. In 1949 Mandela, along with others, led the Defiance Campaign, a program promoting the deliberate disobedience of apartheid laws, even to the point of intentionally allowing oneself to be arrested—and indeed, Mandela was among the first to be arrested. Released fairly quickly, Mandela and a close friend became the first blacks in South Africa to open their own law firm in 1956.

The Sharpeville Massacre (in which the police fired on a peaceful demonstration against apartheid, killing sixty-seven and wounding over one hundred) convinced Mandela that nonviolent opposition to apartheid, given the violent lengths to which the South African government was willing to go, was no longer enough. He helped form the Spear of the Nation, a militant group within the ANC devoted to sabotage. Captured by South African forces in 1962, Mandela was put on trial, and, following a dramatic four-hour speech, later reproduced around the world, in which he pledged his willingness to die for his principles, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. Even while in prison, Mandela remained a vigorous political activist and advocate of justice, helping to organize prisoners and protest for better treatment by prison authorities.

As apartheid began to disintegrate under increasing internal and international pressure, Mandela was moved from the notorious Robben Island Prison to a prison on the mainland. Eventually, in 1990, at seventy-one years of age, Mandela was freed as a result of the reforms of South African President F. W. de Klerk

(b. 1936). His freedom was greeted with loud applause and celebration both within South Africa and around the world.

Mandela would prove instrumental in paving the way for a peaceful transition from the system of apartheid to democratic government, an effort for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize, along with de Klerk, in 1993. The first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994 swept Mandela into the presidency with an overwhelming majority. In true ecumenical fashion, Mandela named de Klerk a deputy president, and in Mandela's only term as president, he proceeded to confront the enormous problems and challenges produced by forty years of apartheid. Mandela's skill as a consensus builder helped him to form a coalition cabinet representing diverse interests, transitioning South Africa to a majority democracy. Mandela's initiatives and policies also were designed to build up the South African economy.

Mandela retired to the village of Qunu, where he was raised, in 1999.

See also: Apartheid; Racism; South Africa.