community | 28 Diaspora Figures | Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela IPA: [roli'?a?a] (born July 18, 1918) was the first President of South Africa to be elected in fully-representative democratic elections. Before his presidency he was a prominent anti-apartheid activist committed to non-violence, but later became involved in the planning of underground armed resistance activities. Mandela's 27-year imprisonment, much of which he spent in a tiny prison cell on Robben Island, became one of the most widely publicized examples of apartheid's injustices. Although the apartheid regime and nations sympathetic to it considered him and the ANC to be terrorist, Mandela's support of the armed struggle against apartheid is now generally regarded as justified. Moreover, the policy of reconciliation Mandela pursued upon his release in 1990 facilitated a peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa.

Having received over a hundred awards over four decades, Mandela is currently a celebrated elder statesman who continues to voice his opinion on topical issues. In South Africa he is known as Madiba, an honorary title adopted by elders of Mandela's clan. The title has come to be synonymous with Nelson Mandela.

Early life

Mandela was born to the Thembu Xhosa family in the small village of Mvezo in the Umtata district, capital of the Transkei. Mandela's father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a counsel to the Thembu king (a position he was groomed for from his birth and which Mandela was also destined to inherit). Mandela's father was instrumental in the ascension to the Thembu throne of Jongintaba Dalindyebo, who would later return this favor by informally adopting Mandela upon Gadla's death. In total, Mandela's father had four wives, with whom he sired a total of thirteen children (4 boys and 9 girls). Mandela was born to Gadla's third wife ('third' by a complex Xhosa social hierarchy), Nosekeni Fanny in whose 'kraal' Mandela spent much of his childhood.

At seven years of age, Rolihlahla Mandela became the first member of his family to attend a school, where he was given the name "Nelson" by a Methodist teacher. His father died when he was nine, and the Regent, Jongintaba, became his guardian. Mandela attended a Wesleyan mission school next door to the palace of the Regent. Following Xhosa custom, he was initiated at age sixteen, and attended Clarkebury Boarding Institute, learning about Western culture. He completed his Junior Certificate in two years, instead of the usual three.

At age nineteen, in 1937, Mandela moved to Healdtown, the Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort, which most Thembu royalty attended, and took an interest in boxing and running. After matriculating, he started to study for a B.A. at the Fort Hare University, where he met Oliver Tambo, and the two became lifelong friends and colleagues.

At the end of his first year, he became involved in a boycott of the Students' Representative Council against the university policies, and was asked to leave Fort Hare. Shortly after this, Jongintaba announced to Mandela and Justice (the Regent's own son and heir to the throne) that he had arranged marriages for both of them. Both young men were displeased by this and rather than marry, they elected to flee the comforts of the Regent's estate to the only place they could: Johannesburg. Upon his arrival in Johannesburg, Mandela initially found employment as a guard at a mine. However, this was quickly terminated after the employer learned that Mandela was the Regent's runaway adopted son. He then managed to find work as an articled clerk at a law firm thanks to connections with his friend and fellow lawyer Walter Sisulu. While working, he completed his degree at the University of South Africa (UNISA) via correspondence, after which he started with his law studies at the University of Witwatersrand.

Political activity

As a young student, Mandela became involved in political opposition to the white minority government's denial of political, social, and economic rights to South Africa's black majority. Joining the African National Congress in 1942, he joined its more dynamic Youth League founded by Anton Lembede, two years later, together with Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and others.

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 program of the anti-apartheid cause. During this time, Mandela and fellow lawyer Oliver Tambo operated the law firm of Mandela and Tambo, providing free or low-cost legal counsel to many blacks who would otherwise have been without legal representation.

Initially committed to non-violent mass struggle, Mandela and 150 others were arrested on 5 December 1956, and charged with treason. The marathon Treason Trial of 1956–61 followed, and all were acquitted. From 1952-1959 the ANC experienced disruption as a new class of Black activists (Africanists) emerged in the townships demanding more drastic steps against the National Party regime. The ANC leadership of Albert Lutuli, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu felt not only that events were moving too fast but also that their leadership was being challenged. They consequently bolstered their position by alliances with small White, Coloured and Indian political parties in an attempt to appear to have a wider appeal than the Africanists. The 1955 Freedom Charter Kliptown Conference was justifiably ridiculed by the Africanists for allowing the 100,000 strong ANC to be relegated to a single vote in a Congress alliance, in which four secretary-generals of the five participating parties were members of the secretly reconstituted South African Communist Party (SACP), the most slavish of all communist parties to the Moscow line.

In 1959 the ANC lost its most militant support when most of the Africanists, with financial support from Ghana and significant political support from the Transvaal-based Basotho, broke away to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) under Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo. Following the massacre of PAC supporters at Sharpeville in March 1960 and the subsequent banning of PAC and ANC, the ANC/SACP followed the African Resistance Movement (renegade liberals) and PAC into armed resistance. Lutuli, criticised for inertia, was peripheralised, and the ANC/SACP used the All-In African Conference of 1961, where all parties met to decide a joint strategy, for Mandela to issue a dramatic call to arms, announcing the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, modelled on the Jewish guerrilla movement, Irgun, and commanded by Mandela with SACP Jewish activists Dennis Goldberg, Rusty Bernstein, and Harold Wolpe.

Mandela then left the country secretly and met African leaders in Algeria and elswhere. Startled to discover the depth of support for the PAC and the widespread belief that the ANC was a small Xhosa tribal association manipulated by White communists, Mandela returned to South Africa determined to reassert the African nationalist element in the Congress Alliance. It is widely suspected that a heated discussion with the communist leaders over this issue led to his subsequent betrayal and arrest near Howick. Mandela glossed over these events in his autobiography but at least one prominent SACP activist associated with him at that time was cold shouldered on his return to South Africa.

In 1961, he became the leader of the ANC's armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (translated as Spear of the Nation, also abbreviated MK), which he co-founded. He co-ordinated a sabotage campaign against military and government targets, and made plans for a possible guerrilla war if sabotage failed to end apartheid. A few decades later, MK did indeed wage a guerrilla war against the regime, especially during the 1980s. Mandela also raised funds for MK abroad, and arranged for paramilitary training, visiting various African governments.

On August 5, 1962, he was arrested after living on the run for seventeen months and was imprisoned in the Johannesburg Fort. William Blum, a former State Department employee, says that the CIA tipped off the police as to Mandela's whereabouts. Three days later, the charges of leading workers to strike in 1961 and leaving the country illegally were read to him during a court appearance. On October 25, 1962, Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison. Two years later on June 11, 1964, a verdict had been reached concerning his previous engagement in the African National Congress (ANC).

While Mandela was in prison, police arrested prominent ANC leaders on July 11, 1963, at Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, north of Johannesburg. Mandela was brought in, and at the Rivonia Trial, Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Andrew Mlangeni, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi, Walter Mkwayi (who escaped during trial), Arthur Goldreich (who escaped from prison before trial), Dennis Goldberg and Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein were charged with the capital crimes of sabotage and crimes equivalent to treason, but which were easier for the government to prove. Bram Fischer, Vernon Berrange, Joel Joffe, Arthur Chaskalson and George Bizos were part of the defence team that represented the accused. Harold Hanson was brought in at the end of the case to plead mitigation. All except Rusty Bernstein were found guilty, but they escaped the gallows and were sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964. Charges included involvement in planning armed action, in particular sabotage, which Mandela admitted to, and a conspiracy to help other countries invade South Africa, which Mandela denied. Over the course of the next twenty-six years, Mandela became increasingly associated with opposition to apartheid to the point where the slogan "Free Nelson Mandela" became the rallying cry for all anti-apartheid campaigners around the world.

While in prison, Mandela was able to send a statement to the ANC who in turn published it on 10 June 1980, reading in part:

Unite! Mobilise! Fight on! Between the anvil of united mass action and the hammer of the armed struggle we shall crush apartheid!

Refusing an offer of conditional release in return for renouncing armed struggle in February 1985, Mandela remained in prison until February 1990, when sustained ANC campaigning and international pressure led to his release on February 11, when State President F.W. de Klerk ordered his release and the ending of the ban on the ANC. He and De Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. He became the third of only three persons of non-Indian origin (Mother Teresa in 1980, a naturalised Indian citizen, and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in 1987, a non-Indian, being the others) to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 1990. Mandela had already been awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1988.

On the day of his release, February 11, 1990, Mandela made a speech to the nation. While declaring his commitment to peace and reconciliation with the country's white minority, he made it clear that the ANC's armed struggle was not yet over: He also stated that his main focus was to give peace to the Black people and give them the right to vote in National and Provincal elections.

"Our resort to the armed struggle in 1960 with the formation of the military wing of the ANC (Umkhonto we Sizwe) was a purely defensive action against the violence of apartheid. The factors which necessitated the armed struggle still exist today. We have no option but to continue. We express the hope that a climate conducive to a negotiated settlement would be created soon, so that there may no longer be the need for the armed struggle."

ANC presidency and presidency of South Africa

South Africa's first democratic elections in which full enfranchisement was granted were held on April 27, 1994. The ANC won the majority in the election, and Mandela, as leader of the ANC, was inaugurated as the country's first black State President, with the National party's FW de Klerk as his deputy president in the Government of National Unity.

As President, (May 1994 – June 1999), Mandela presided over the transition from minority rule and apartheid, winning international respect for his advocacy of national and international reconciliation.

However, his administration attracted some criticism, particularly when South Africa invaded Lesotho in September 1998 while he was still President.

Certain interest groups were also disappointed with the social achievements of his term of office, particularly the government's ineffectiveness in stemming the AIDS crisis.

After his retirement, Mandela admitted that he may have failed his country by not paying more attention to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He has taken many opportunities since to highlight this South African tragedy.