Mandela

NELSON MANDELA
Born as Rolihlahla Mandela on July 18, 1918 in Transkei, South Africa, in the tiny village of Mvezo on the banks of the Mbashe River in the province of Transkei. "Rolihlahla" in the language of Xhosa literally means "pulling the branch of a tree," but more commonly means "troublemaker."
A towering figure in 20th-century history, the Nobel Laureate showed how wisdom and patiencecan triumph over bigotry and brute force. Truly the Father of a Nation.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was the son of one of South Africa's leading dignitaries, Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe, and it was as a young law student that he became involved in political opposition to the white minority regime. Joining the African National Congress (ANC) in 1942, he co-founded its more dynamic YouthLeague two years later.

After the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, with its apartheid policy of racial segregation, Mandela was prominent in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People, whose adoption of the Freedom Charter provided the fundamental programme of the anti-apartheid cause.

Initially committed to non-violent mass struggleand acquitted in the marathon Treason Trial of 1956 - 1961, Mandela and his colleagues accepted the case for armed action after the shooting of unarmed protesters at Sharpeville, in March 1960, and the banning of anti-apartheid groups.

In 1961, he became the commander of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. In August of the following year, he was arrested and jailed for five years. In June1964, he was sentenced again, this time to life imprisonment, for his involvement in planning armed action.

He started his prison years in the infamous Robben Island Prison, a maximum security facility on a small island off the coast of Cape Town. In April 1984, he was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town and in December 1988 he was moved to the Victor Verster Prison near Paarl from wherehe was eventually released.

While in prison, Mandela rejected offers made by his jailers for remission of sentence in exchange for accepting the bantustan policy by recognising the independence of the Transkei region and agreeing to settle there. Among opponents of apartheid in South Africa and internationally, he became a cultural symbol of freedom and equality.

Mandela remained in prisonuntil February 1990, when sustained ANC campaigning and international pressure led to his release. On 2 February 1990, South African President F.W. de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and other anti-apartheid organisations. Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison on 11 February 1990.

He and President de Klerk - who did much to dismantle the institutions of apartheid - shared the NobelPeace Prize in 1993. In Mandela's 1994 autobiography, 'Long Walk to Freedom', he did not reveal anything about the alleged complicity of de Klerk in the violence of the 1980s and 90s, or the role of his ex-wife Winnie Mandela in that bloodshed. However, he later discussed those issues in 'Mandela: The Authorised Biography'.

After his release, Mandela returned to the leadership of the ANC and,between 1990 and 1994, led the party in the multi-party negotiations that resulted in the country's first multi-racial elections. As the first black president of South Africa (1994 - 1999), he presided over the transition from minority rule and apartheid. He won praise for his leadership during this time, even from his former white opponents in South Africa.

Following his retirement as presidentin 1999, Mandela went on to become an advocate for a variety of social and human-rights organisations. He used his status as a respected elder statesman to give weight to pertinent issues, declaring the United States "a threat to world peace" in 2002 while calling on then president George W Bush not to launch attacks on Iraq.

Because his health was declining, Mandela chose to retire from...