Born in Transkei, South Africa, on July 18, 1918, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is one of Africa’s greatest nationalists, political activists, and statesmen. The son of Chief Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa of the Thembu and his wife, Nosekeni Fanny of the amaMpemvu clan, Mandela’s father named him Rolihlahla, which literally means ”pulling the branch of a tree” or ”troublemaker” in Xhosa. The English name ”Nelson” was added later by a primary school teacher—an example of the imperial arrogance that characterized South Africa’s colonial history.
Nelson Mandela’s nature was deeply rooted in his chiefly upbringing in the royal house of the Thembu after the death of his father. Mandela’s life, however, was defined by the struggle against racism, an inequality that defined white-black relations in South Africa until 1995, when the country became a democracy.
Mandela was educated at Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school, and the missionary University College of Fort Hare. His membership in the Student’s Representative Council exposed him as a firebrand young radical and activist. He was suspended from college for joining in a protest boycott against the white racist policy of the institution. But it was only after he left Fort Hare and went to Johannesburg, where he completed his bachelor of arts degree by correspondence, took articles of clerkship, and commenced study for his law degree with the University of Witwatersrand, that he set out on the long task for national liberation.
Mandela was exposed daily to the inhumanities of apartheid, where being black reduced one to the status of a nonperson. Mandela joined a small but vocal group of African political activists with the aim of uprooting centuries of colonial rule that had concentrated all political and economic power in the hands of the white minority. He joined the African National Congress (ANC), the premier black political organization, in 1942. Mandela and a small group of young African members of the African National Congress, including William Nkomo (1915-1972), Walter Sisulu (1912-2003), Oliver R. Tambo (1917-1993), and Ashby P. Mda, under the leadership of Anton Lembede (1913-1947), founded the African National Congress Youth League in September 1944. They argued that the political tactics of the old leadership of the ANC were proving inadequate.
Nelson Mandela Leaves Prison. Mandela, hand-in-hand with then-wife Winnie Mandela, parades past a jubilant crowd shortly after his release from prison on February 11, 1990.
Members of the ANC Youth League set themselves the task of transforming the ANC into a mass movement that would derive its strength and motivation from the working people in the towns and countryside, peasants, and professionals. Mandela’s leadership impressed his peers, and he was elected the secretary of the Youth League in 1947. He became deeply involved in programs of passive resistance against the pass law, which made it compulsory for all black South Africans over the age of sixteen to carry, at all times, a pass book that stipulated where, when, and for how long a person could remain in a particular part of the country. He was also involved with other apartheid legislation that kept blacks in a position of permanent servility.
The victory of the National Party in the all-white elections of 1948 on the platform of apartheid spurred more radical action from black political leaders. At its 1949 annual conference, the ANC adopted the ”Programme of Action.” The Programme of Action, inspired by the Youth League, advocated boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience, and noncooperation, tactics that were accepted as official ANC policy. The Youth League called for full citizenship, direct parliamentary representation for all South Africans, the redistribution of the land, trade union rights, and free and compulsory education for all children, as well as mass education for adults.
In 1950 Mandela was elected into the National Executive Committee of the ANC. From this period, the ANC became more radical in its attempt to transform South African society. Mandela was elected national volunteer-in-chief when the ANC launched its Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws in 1952. This initiative was conceived as a civil disobedience campaign that would ultimately culminate in mass defiance by ordinary people.
Mandela’s role as volunteer-in-chief took him to many parts of the country to organize resistance to discriminatory legislation. Mandela played an important part in leading the resistance to the Western Areas removal scheme, which forced residents out of their homes in Sophiatown and relocated them to Meadowlands (now part of Soweto), and also to the introduction of the Bantu Education Act (1953), which enforced separation of races in all educational institutions including the curriculum. In recognition of his outstanding contribution during the Defiance Campaign, Mandela was elected to the presidency of both the Youth League and the ANC in Transvaal in 1952, and thus became a deputy president of the ANC.
Mandela was constantly under the radar of the white racist regime during the whole of the 1950s. He was brought to trial for his role in the Defiance Campaign and convicted of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, for which he received a suspended prison sentence. Shortly after the campaign ended, he was also prohibited from attending gatherings and confined to Johannesburg for six months.
The Sharpeville Massacre on March 21, 1960, occurred when sixty-nine black South Africans, protesting against pass laws, were killed as the police opened fire on them. This marked a turning point in the struggle for liberation in South Africa. A state of emergency was declared at the beginning of April 1960, and several leading anti-apartheid politicians, black and white, were arrested. Following this, the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) were outlawed. The leadership of the ANC went underground. Mandela emerged at this time as the leading figure in this new phase of the struggle. It was during this time that he, together with other ANC leaders, formed a new section of the liberation movement known as Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) as an armed wing of the ANC in 1961. Mandela was its commander-in-chief.
In 1962 Mandela left the country unlawfully and traveled abroad for several months. He was warmly received by senior political leaders in several countries including Algeria and Ethiopia. Anticipating an intensification of the armed struggle, Mandela began to arrange guerrilla training for members of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Not long after his return to South Africa in July 1962, he was arrested and charged with illegal exit from the country and incitement to strike. Mandela was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
Exasperated, the government mounted a massive treason trial against ANC leaders, Mandela among them. While serving his sentence, Mandela was charged with sabotage in the Rivonia Trial, which began on November 26, 1963. During the trial, he uttered these immortal words: ”I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. 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.”
Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment and started his prison years in the notorious Robben Island Prison, a maximum-security prison on a small island off the coast of Cape Town. Released on February 11, 1990, Mandela plunged wholeheartedly into his life’s work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after being banned for decades, Nelson Mandela was elected president of the organization.
In 1993 Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Price, which he accepted on behalf of all people who have worked for peace and stood against racism. He became the first democratically elected president of South Africa in 1994 and served until June 1999.
After stepping down as president, Mandela continued to speak with the same moral force and devotion to democracy, equality, and commitment to conflict resolution, and he continued to work for the elimination of poverty, as well as the improvement of public health in Africa, especially with regard to HIV/AIDS. He remained an inspiration to fair-minded people all over the world.
