Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, lovingly known as Madiba (a Xhosa word that means “father”) (1918 – 2013) African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.

Mandela attended the University of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party’s apartheid policies after 1948. 

After the government banned the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela helped form a military wing within the ANC, known as Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. In 1963, when his fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested in Rivonia, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity. On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town.

During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela’s reputation grew steadily. As the most significant black leader in South Africa, he became a potent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement gathered strength. He consistently refused to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom. 

After being imprisoned for 27 years, Nelson Mandela was released on February 11, 1990. After his release, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into his life’s work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier—his negotiations in the early 1990s with South African Pres. F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s system of racial segregation. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts.” On April 27, 1994, South Africa held its first democratic elections. Mandela was inaugurated as the country’s first Black president on May 10, 1994, at the age of 77, with de Klerk as his first deputy.