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Nelson Mandela was a remarkable leader and an important figure in the history of South Africa. He was imprisoned for 27 years, but he refused to give up his fight for freedom. When he was released in 1990, Mandela became the first black president of South Africa. He served as president until 1994, when he was elected to the parliament of South Africa. Mandela continued to serve in parliament until 1997, when he retired from politics. He died in 2013 at the age of 95. After spending 27 years in prison, he emerged as one of South Africa’s most revered icons and helped to lead the country through its dark days into an era of racial equality and democracy. As one of the architects of freedom in South Africa, his legacy is sure to be remembered for years to come.

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Nelson Mandela was a remarkable individual who had a profound impact on both South Africa and the world. He was born in 1918 in Mvezo, Transkei, and became a political activist at a young age. He was imprisoned for years for his beliefs, but eventually became president of South Africa in 1994. Under his leadership, South Africa became a democracy and saw significant economic growth. Mandela passed away in 2013 at the age of 95 after a long and successful career. Nelson Mandela was an icon of human rights and democracy. He fought against apartheid and became the first black president of South Africa in 1994. After his release from prison, he worked tirelessly to promote reconciliation and democracy in his country. Mandela’s tireless work has earned him numerous awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize. His legacy will continue to inspire people around the world to fight for justice and equality.

Paragraph on Nelson Mandela- 200 Words

Nelson Mandela was an influential figure in the fight for democracy and human rights. He was imprisoned for 27 years, but eventually became the president of South Africa. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for his work on behalf of the people of South Africa. Mandela is a symbol of hope and resilience, and his legacy will continue to be felt throughout the world. He was an amazing human being who has been credited with helping to bring about change and peace in his country, South Africa. He was also a powerful leader and a prolific writer. He is best known for his role in the struggle against white rule in South Africa and for leading the country to democracy. Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990, after serving 27 years of a life sentence for terrorism. Nelson Mandela was a powerful leader and an icon of peace. He fought for human rights and against apartheid, which was a government system that segregated people based on race. He is now considered one of the most influential figures in history. He left an incredible legacy. Mandela was a powerful voice for social justice, fighting for human rights and democracy worldwide. He is considered one of the greatest leaders in history and his influence is still felt today. Read about his amazing life story and see what he accomplished!

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Nelson Mandela was a Nobel Prize-winning South African politician and activist who served as President of the country from 1994 to 1999. He played a leading role in the fight against apartheid, and became head of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1961. In 1990, he was elected President of South Africa, becoming the first black leader of a major Western country. He remained president until his death in 2013. During his time as president, Mandela made significant changes to South Africa’s government and society. He abolished apartheid and reorganized the country’s economy into five sectors: public service, private enterprise, agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism. He also created an integrated education system that included both white and black schools. Mandela was a powerful advocate for human rights, and his presidency was marked by significant peace efforts between South Africa and its former enemies. He is often cited as one of the greatest leaders of our time. Nelson Mandela, one of the most iconic and influential leaders in recent history, was born on July 18, 1918. He became president of South Africa in 1994 after years of fighting against white rule. Mandela’s role as president was not without its challenges – he faced many struggles including years of imprisonment on Robben Island – but his legacy is unquestioned. After his presidency ended in 1999, Mandela devoted himself to helping the poor and disadvantaged around the world through his non-profit organization, The Nelson Mandel Foundation. Today, he is widely recognized for his work with democracy and human rights. He played an important role in the fight against apartheid and helped to bring about change for the betterment of all South Africans. His legacy continues to live on through his work and teachings, and we should all be proud of what he has done for our society.

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Introduction

Nelson Mandela was an incredible person who helped to shape the course of history. He is best known for his work as a political activist in South Africa, and later as the first President of South Africa after the country’s liberation from white rule. Mandela was also a deeply spiritual man, and his moral compass helped him navigate through some of the most difficult times in his life. While Mandela’s death at the age of 95 was a great loss to the world, it also opened up space for others to carry on his legacy. In particular, his daughter Zindzi has made it her mission to ensure that her father’s message of forgiveness and reconciliation is heard around the world. Regardless of your political beliefs, be sure to read Zindzi Mandela’s powerful words on her father’s life and death.

Life of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918 in Mvezo, a small town in the Transkei region of South Africa. After graduating from high school, Mandela enrolled at the University of Fort Hare where he became involved in the African National Congress (ANC). In 1944, he was arrested for his involvement in the ANC and sentenced to five years in prison. While incarcerated, Mandela studied law and developed his political beliefs. Upon his release from prison in 1962, Mandela became the Umkhonto weSizwe ( Spear of the Nation) leader of the ANC and worked to liberate South Africa from white rule. In 1990, after years of campaigning and negotiation, Mandela was elected President of South Africa and served until 1994. Mandela is now retired and resides in Houghton, South Africa.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was an incredible figure in the world, and his impact on history is undeniable. He was a leader of the African National Congress during South Africa’s apartheid regime, and after years of fighting and protesting he was eventually imprisoned and released in 1990. Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994, and led the country through a period of significant change and progress. He passed away in 2013, but his legacy will continue to be felt long into the future.

Legacy of Nelson Mandela

Mandela was a global symbol of resistance and reconciliation. He championed the rights of the poor and condemned apartheid as an injustice. Mandela served 27 years in prison before becoming South Africa’s first black president. He passed away in 2013 at the age of 95.

What Nelson Mandela Did

Nelson Mandela was a revolutionary who helped to change South Africa and the world. He was imprisoned for 27 years, but he never gave up hope of one day becoming the president of South Africa. After his release in 1990, Mandela became the first black leader of South Africa. He served as president until 1999, when he was elected as the first black president of the country. Mandela is now retired and lives in Johannesburg.

Mandela’s legacy spans more than sixty years, and his influence is still felt today. He was a powerful symbol of resistance against South Africa’s white minority rule, and his message of Equality, Justice and Peace has inspired millions. Mandela is also credited with helping to revive the African National Congress (ANC) and leading it to victory in the 1990 election. His tireless work for human rights has earned him numerous awards and honors, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Background of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in the Transkei region of South Africa. His father, Thembelani Mandela, was a political leader and chief of the Xhosa tribe. Mandela’s mother, Dolly (Dolores) Madikizela, was a teacher. Mandela attended a Christian school and then the University of South Africa where he studied law. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943 and served as its secretary-general from 1961 to 1989. In 1962, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island for his role in anti-apartheid activities. He was released in 1990 as part of an agreement between the ANC and the government. In 1991, Mandela was elected the first president of South Africa. During his presidency, he led negotiations that led to the dismantling of apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial democracy. Mandela retired from public life in 1999 and died on December 5, 2013.

Achievements of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is considered one of the most influential and significant political activists of the 20th century. He was a leader in the African National Congress and served 18 years in prison because of his activism. Mandela was released in 1990 after negotiations with the South African government. Mandela has since served as president of South Africa and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. He has made significant contributions to peace and reconciliation, and his work has helped to promote human rights globally.

In the twentieth century, Nelson Mandela was one of the most influential and celebrated leaders in the world. He fought against discrimination and apartheid in South Africa for over twenty-five years, leading to his imprisonment and eventual release. Mandela is now a global symbol of human rights and reconciliation, and his legacy continues to inspire people around the world. Thank you for reading this article on Nelson Mandela, and I hope it has helped you learn more about one of history’s greatest figures.

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Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was the first Black president of South Africa, elected after time in prison for his anti-apartheid work. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

(1918-2013)

Who Was Nelson Mandela?

Beginning in 1962, Mandela spent 27 years in prison for political offenses. In 1993, Mandela and South African President F.W. de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to dismantle the country's apartheid system. For generations to come, Mandela will be a source of inspiration for civil rights activists worldwide.

Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in the tiny village of Mvezo, on the banks of the Mbashe River in Transkei, South Africa.

His birth name was Rolihlahla Mandela. "Rolihlahla" in the Xhosa language literally means "pulling the branch of a tree," but more commonly translates as "troublemaker."

Mandela's father, who was destined to be a chief, served as a counselor to tribal chiefs for several years but lost both his title and fortune over a dispute with the local colonial magistrate.

Mandela was only an infant at the time, and his father's loss of status forced his mother to move the family to Qunu, an even smaller village north of Mvezo. The village was nestled in a narrow grassy valley; there were no roads, only footpaths that linked the pastures where livestock grazed.

The family lived in huts and ate a local harvest of maize, sorghum, pumpkin and beans, which was all they could afford. Water came from springs and streams and cooking was done outdoors.

Mandela played the games of young boys, acting out male right-of-passage scenarios with toys he made from the natural materials available, including tree branches and clay.

At the suggestion of one of his father's friends, Mandela was baptized in the Methodist Church. He went on to become the first in his family to attend school. As was custom at the time, and probably due to the bias of the British educational system in South Africa, Mandela's teacher told him that his new first name would be Nelson.

When Mandela was 12 years old, his father died of lung disease, causing his life to change dramatically. He was adopted by Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo, the acting regent of the Thembu people — a gesture done as a favor to Mandela's father, who, years earlier, had recommended Jongintaba be made chief.

Mandela subsequently left the carefree life he knew in Qunu, fearing that he would never see his village again. He traveled by motorcar to Mqhekezweni, the provincial capital of Thembuland, to the chief's royal residence. Though he had not forgotten his beloved village of Qunu, he quickly adapted to the new, more sophisticated surroundings of Mqhekezweni.

Mandela was given the same status and responsibilities as the regent's two other children, his son and oldest child, Justice, and daughter Nomafu. Mandela took classes in a one-room school next to the palace, studying English, Xhosa, history and geography.

It was during this period that Mandela developed an interest in African history, from elder chiefs who came to the Great Palace on official business. He learned how the African people had lived in relative peace until the coming of the white people.

According to the elders, the children of South Africa had previously lived as brothers, but white men had shattered this fellowship. While Black men shared their land, air and water with white people, white men took all of these things for themselves.

READ MORE: 14 Inspiring Nelson Mandela Quotes

Political Awakening

When Mandela was 16, it was time for him to partake in the traditional African circumcision ritual to mark his entrance into manhood. The ceremony of circumcision was not just a surgical procedure, but an elaborate ritual in preparation for manhood.

In African tradition, an uncircumcised man cannot inherit his father's wealth, marry or officiate at tribal rituals. Mandela participated in the ceremony with 25 other boys. He welcomed the opportunity to partake in his people's customs and felt ready to make the transition from boyhood to manhood.

His mood shifted during the proceedings, however, when Chief Meligqili, the main speaker at the ceremony, spoke sadly of the young men, explaining that they were enslaved in their own country. Because their land was controlled by white men, they would never have the power to govern themselves, the chief said.

He went on to lament that the promise of the young men would be squandered as they struggled to make a living and perform mindless chores for white men. Mandela would later say that while the chief's words didn't make total sense to him at the time, they would eventually formulate his resolve for an independent South Africa.

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University Life

Under the guardianship of Regent Jongintaba, Mandela was groomed to assume high office, not as a chief, but a counselor to one. As Thembu royalty, Mandela attended a Wesleyan mission school, the Clarkebury Boarding Institute and Wesleyan College, where, he would later state, he achieved academic success through "plain hard work."

He also excelled at track and boxing. Mandela was initially mocked as a "country boy" by his Wesleyan classmates, but eventually became friends with several students, including Mathona, his first female friend.

In 1939, Mandela enrolled at the University of Fort Hare , the only residential center of higher learning for Black people in South Africa at the time. Fort Hare was considered Africa's equivalent of Harvard , drawing scholars from all parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

In his first year at the university, Mandela took the required courses, but focused on Roman-Dutch law to prepare for a career in civil service as an interpreter or clerk — regarded as the best profession that a Black man could obtain at the time.

In his second year at Fort Hare, Mandela was elected to the Student Representative Council. For some time, students had been dissatisfied with the food and lack of power held by the SRC. During this election, a majority of students voted to boycott unless their demands were met.

Aligning with the student majority, Mandela resigned from his position. Seeing this as an act of insubordination, the university expelled Mandela for the rest of the year and gave him an ultimatum: He could return to the school if he agreed to serve on the SRC. When Mandela returned home, the regent was furious, telling him unequivocally that he would have to recant his decision and go back to school in the fall.

A few weeks after Mandela returned home, Regent Jongintaba announced that he had arranged a marriage for his adopted son. The regent wanted to make sure that Mandela's life was properly planned, and the arrangement was within his right, as tribal custom dictated.

Shocked by the news, feeling trapped and believing that he had no other option than to follow this recent order, Mandela ran away from home. He settled in Johannesburg, where he worked a variety of jobs, including as a guard and a clerk, while completing his bachelor's degree via correspondence courses. He then enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to study law.

Anti-Apartheid Movement

Mandela soon became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress in 1942. Within the ANC, a small group of young Africans banded together, calling themselves the African National Congress Youth League. Their goal was to transform the ANC into a mass grassroots movement, deriving strength from millions of rural peasants and working people who had no voice under the current regime.

Specifically, the group believed that the ANC's old tactics of polite petitioning were ineffective. In 1949, the ANC officially adopted the Youth League's methods of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-cooperation, with policy goals of full citizenship, redistribution of land, trade union rights, and free and compulsory education for all children.

For 20 years, Mandela directed peaceful, nonviolent acts of defiance against the South African government and its racist policies, including the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He founded the law firm Mandela and Tambo, partnering with Oliver Tambo , a brilliant student he'd met while attending Fort Hare. The law firm provided free and low-cost legal counsel to unrepresented Black people.

In 1956, Mandela and 150 others were arrested and charged with treason for their political advocacy (they were eventually acquitted). Meanwhile, the ANC was being challenged by Africanists, a new breed of Black activists who believed that the pacifist method of the ANC was ineffective.

Africanists soon broke away to form the Pan-Africanist Congress, which negatively affected the ANC; by 1959, the movement had lost much of its militant support.

Wife and Children

Mandela was married three times and had six children. He wed his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase, in 1944. The couple had four children together: Madiba Thembekile (d. 1964), Makgatho (d. 2005), Makaziwe (d. 1948 at nine months old) and Maki. The couple divorced in 1957.

In 1958, Mandela wed Winnie Madikizela . The couple had two daughters together, Zenani (Argentina's South African ambassador) and Zindziswa (the South African ambassador to Denmark), before separating in 1996.

Two years later, in 1998, Mandela married Graca Machel, the first Education Minister of Mozambique, with whom he remained until his death in 2013.

Prison Years

Formerly committed to nonviolent protest, Mandela began to believe that armed struggle was the only way to achieve change. In 1961, Mandela co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, also known as MK, an armed offshoot of the ANC dedicated to sabotage and use guerilla war tactics to end apartheid.

In 1961, Mandela orchestrated a three-day national workers' strike. He was arrested for leading the strike the following year and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 1963, Mandela was brought to trial again. This time, he and 10 other ANC leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment for political offenses, including sabotage.

Mandela spent 27 years in prison, from November 1962 until February 1990. He was incarcerated on Robben Island for 18 of his 27 years in prison. During this time, he contracted tuberculosis and, as a Black political prisoner, received the lowest level of treatment from prison workers. However, while incarcerated, Mandela was able to earn a Bachelor of Law degree through a University of London correspondence program.

A 1981 memoir by South African intelligence agent Gordon Winter described a plot by the South African government to arrange for Mandela's escape so as to shoot him during the recapture; the plot was foiled by British intelligence.

Mandela continued to be such a potent symbol of Black resistance that a coordinated international campaign for his release was launched, and this international groundswell of support exemplified the power and esteem that Mandela had in the global political community.

In 1982, Mandela and other ANC leaders were moved to Pollsmoor Prison, allegedly to enable contact between them and the South African government. In 1985, President P.W. Botha offered Mandela's release in exchange for renouncing armed struggle; the prisoner flatly rejected the offer.

F. W. de Klerk

With increasing local and international pressure for his release, the government participated in several talks with Mandela over the ensuing years, but no deal was made.

It wasn't until Botha suffered a stroke and was replaced by Frederik Willem de Klerk that Mandela's release was finally announced, on February 11, 1990. De Klerk also lifted the ban on the ANC, removed restrictions on political groups and suspended executions.

Upon his release from prison, Mandela immediately urged foreign powers not to reduce their pressure on the South African government for constitutional reform. While he stated that he was committed to working toward peace, he declared that the ANC's armed struggle would continue until the Black majority received the right to vote.

In 1991, Mandela was elected president of the African National Congress, with lifelong friend and colleague Oliver Tambo serving as national chairperson.

Nobel Peace Prize

In 1993, Mandela and President de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work toward dismantling apartheid in South Africa.

After Mandela’s release from prison, he negotiated with President de Klerk toward the country's first multiracial elections. White South Africans were willing to share power, but many Black South Africans wanted a complete transfer of power.

The negotiations were often strained, and news of violent eruptions, including the assassination of ANC leader Chris Hani, continued throughout the country. Mandela had to keep a delicate balance of political pressure and intense negotiations amid the demonstrations and armed resistance.

Due in no small part to the work of Mandela and President de Klerk, negotiations between Black and white South Africans prevailed: 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.

From 1994 until June 1999, President Mandela worked to bring about the transition from minority rule and apartheid to Black majority rule. He used the nation's enthusiasm for sports as a pivot point to promote reconciliation between white and Black people, encouraging Black South Africans to support the once-hated national rugby team.

In 1995, South Africa came to the world stage by hosting the Rugby World Cup, which brought further recognition and prestige to the young republic. That year Mandela was also awarded the Order of Merit.

During his presidency, Mandela also worked to protect South Africa's economy from collapse. Through his Reconstruction and Development Plan, the South African government funded the creation of jobs, housing and basic health care.

In 1996, Mandela signed into law a new constitution for the nation, establishing a strong central government based on majority rule, and guaranteeing both the rights of minorities and the freedom of expression.

Retirement and Later Career

By the 1999 general election, Mandela had retired from active politics. He continued to maintain a busy schedule, however, raising money to build schools and clinics in South Africa's rural heartland through his foundation, and serving as a mediator in Burundi's civil war.

Mandela was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer in 2001. In June 2004, at the age of 85, he announced his formal retirement from public life and returned to his native village of Qunu.

On July 18, 2007, Mandela and wife Graca Machel co-founded The Elders , a group of world leaders aiming to work both publicly and privately to find solutions to some of the world's toughest issues. The group included Desmond Tutu , Kofi Annan , Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter , Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson and Muhammad Yunus.

The Elders' impact has spanned Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and their actions have included promoting peace and women's equality, demanding an end to atrocities, and supporting initiatives to address humanitarian crises and promote democracy.

In addition to advocating for peace and equality on both a national and global scale, in his later years, Mandela remained committed to the fight against AIDS . His son Makgatho died of the disease in 2005.

Relationship With Barack Obama

Mandela made his last public appearance at the final match of the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. He remained largely out of the spotlight in his later years, choosing to spend much of his time in his childhood community of Qunu, south of Johannesburg.

He did, however, visit with U.S. first lady Michelle Obama , wife of President Barack Obama , during her trip to South Africa in 2011. Barack Obama, while a junior senator from Illinois, also met with Mandela during his 2005 trip to the United States.

Mandela died on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95 in his home in Johannesburg, South Africa. After suffering a lung infection in January 2011, Mandela was briefly hospitalized in Johannesburg to undergo surgery for a stomach ailment in early 2012.

He was released after a few days, later returning to Qunu. Mandela would be hospitalized many times over the next several years — in December 2012, March 2013 and June 2013 — for further testing and medical treatment relating to his recurrent lung infection.

Following his June 2013 hospital visit, Machel, canceled a scheduled appearance in London to remain at her husband's side, and his daughter, Zenani Dlamini, flew back from Argentina to South Africa to be with her father.

Jacob Zuma , South Africa's president, issued a statement in response to public concern over Mandela's March 2013 health scare, asking for support in the form of prayer: "We appeal to the people of South Africa and the world to pray for our beloved Madiba and his family and to keep them in their thoughts," Zuma said.

On the day of Mandela’s death, Zuma released a statement speaking to Mandela's legacy: "Wherever we are in the country, wherever we are in the world, let us reaffirm his vision of a society ... in which none is exploited, oppressed or dispossessed by another," he said.

Movie and Books

In 1994, Mandela published his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom , much of which he had secretly written while in prison. The book inspired the 2013 movie Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

He also published a number of books on his life and struggles, among them No Easy Walk to Freedom ; Nelson Mandela: The Struggle Is My Life ; and Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales .

Mandela Day

In 2009, Mandela's birthday (July 18) was declared Mandela Day, an international day to promote global peace and celebrate the South African leader's legacy. According to the Nelson Mandela Foundation , the annual event is meant to encourage citizens worldwide to give back the way that Mandela has throughout his lifetime.

A statement on the Nelson Mandela Foundation's website reads: "Mr. Mandela gave 67 years of his life fighting for the rights of humanity. All we are asking is that everyone gives 67 minutes of their time, whether it’s supporting your chosen charity or serving your local community."

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Nelson Mandela
• Birth Year: 1918
• Birth date: July 18, 1918
• Birth City: Mvezo, Transkei
• Birth Country: South Africa
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Nelson Mandela was the first Black president of South Africa, elected after time in prison for his anti-apartheid work. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
• Civil Rights
• World Politics
• Astrological Sign: Cancer
• University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
• University College of Fort Hare
• Wesleyan College
• University of London
• Clarkebury Boarding Institute
• Nacionalities
• South African
• Interesting Facts
• Mandela's African name "Rolihlahla" means "troublemaker."
• Mandela became the first Black president of South Africa in 1994, serving until 1999.
• Beginning in 1962, Mandela spent 27 years in prison for political offenses.
• Death Year: 2013
• Death date: December 5, 2013
• Death City: Johannesburg
• Death Country: South Africa

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Nelson Mandela Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/nelson-mandela
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: January 7, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• I hate race discrimination most intensely and in all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days.
• Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of a sinner who keeps on trying, one armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end.
• Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that is, therefore, why I will sleep for the eternity.
• Those who conduct themselves with morality, integrity and consistency need not fear the forces of inhumanity and cruelty.
• Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do.
• Our march to freedom is irreversible. We must not allow fear to stand in our way.
• When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
• I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it....The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
• Prison itself is a tremendous education in the need for patience and perseverance. It is above all a test of one's commitment.
• I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.
• During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. 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.
• For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
• If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.
• Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.
• I was made, by the law, a criminal, not because of what I had done, but because of what I stood for, because of what I thought, because of my conscience.
• The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
• Wherever we are in the country, wherever we are in the world, let us reaffirm his vision of a society ... in which none is exploited, oppressed or dispossessed by another.

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Biography Nelson Mandela

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

– Nelson Mandela

Short Bio of Nelson Mandela

A young Nelson Mandela (1938)

Nelson Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918. He was the son of a local tribal leader of the Tembu tribe. As a youngster, Nelson took part in the activities and initiation ceremonies of his local tribe. However, unlike his father Nelson Mandela gained a full education, studying at the University College of Fort Hare and also the University of Witwatersrand. Nelson was a good student and qualified with a law degree in 1942.

During his time at University, Nelson Mandela became increasingly aware of the racial inequality and injustice faced by non-white people. In 1943, he decided to join the ANC and actively take part in the struggle against apartheid.

As one of the few qualified lawyers, Nelson Mandela was in great demand; also his commitment to the cause saw him promoted through the ranks of the ANC. In 1956, Nelson Mandela, along with several other members of the ANC were arrested and charged with treason. After a lengthy and protracted court case, the defendants were finally acquitted in 1961. However, with the ANC now banned, Nelson Mandela suggested an active armed resistance to the apartheid regime. This led to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, which would act as a guerilla resistance movement. Receiving training in other African countries, the Umkhonto we Sizwe took part in active sabotage.

In 1963, Mandela was again arrested and put on trial for treason. This time the State succeeded in convicting Mandela of plotting to overthrow the government. However, the case received considerable international attention and the apartheid regime of South Africa became under the glare of the international community. At the end of his trial, Nelson Mandela made a long speech, in which he was able to affirm his commitment to the ideals of democracy.

“We believe that South Africa belongs to all the people who live in it, and not to one group, be it black or white. We did not want an interracial war, and tried to avoid it to the last minute.”

– Nelson Mandela, Supreme court of South Africa, Pretoria, April 20, 1964

Closing remark at the 1964 trial

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. 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.”

– Nelson Mandela, Supreme court of South Africa, Pretoria, April 20, 1964. (See: full speech )

Time in Prison

F.W.De Klerk and Nelson Mandela at World Economic Forum 1992.

During his time in prison, Mandela became increasingly well known throughout the world. Mandela became the best known black leader and was symbolic of the struggle against the apartheid regime. Largely unbeknown to Mandela, his continued imprisonment led to a world-wide pressure for his release. Many countries implemented sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Due to international pressure, from the mid-1980s, the apartheid regime increasingly began to negotiate with the ANC and Nelson Mandela in particular. On many occasions, Mandela was offered a conditional freedom. However, he always refused to put the political ideals of the ANC above his own freedom.

Freedom and a new Rainbow Nation

Mandela voting in 1994 election. Photo. P.Weinburg

Eventually, Nelson Mandela was released on February 11, 1990. The day was a huge event for South Africa and the world. His release symbolic of the impending end of apartheid. Following his release there followed protracted negotiations to secure a lasting settlement. The negotiations were tense often against the backdrop of tribal violence. However, in April 1994, South Africa had its first full and fair elections. The ANC, with 65% of the vote, were elected and Nelson Mandela became the first President of the new South Africa.

“The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.”

As President, he sought to heal the rifts of the past. Despite being mistreated, he was magnanimous in his dealing with his former oppressors. His forgiving and tolerant attitude gained the respect of the whole South African nation and considerably eased the transition to a full democracy.

“If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named goodness and forgiveness.”

Photo: Governor-General of Australia

In 1995, the Rugby World Cup was held in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was instrumental in encouraging black South Africans to support the ‘Springboks’ – The Springboks were previously reviled for being a symbol of white supremacy. Mandela surprised many by meeting the Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar, before the World Cup to wish the team well. After an epic final, in which South Africa beat New Zealand, Mandela, wearing a Springbok jersey, presented the trophy to the winning South Africa team. De Klerk later stated Mandela successfully won the hearts of a million white rugby fans.

Nelson Mandela also oversaw the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in which former crimes of apartheid were investigated, but stressing individual forgiveness and helping the nation to look forward. The Committee was chaired by Desmond Tutu , and Mandela later praised its work.

Nelson Mandela retired from the Presidency in 1999, to be succeeded by Thabo Mbeki. In Mandela’s later years, ill health curtailed his public life. However, he did speak out on certain issues. He was very critical of the US-led invasion of Iraq during 2003. Speaking in a Newsweek interview in 2002, he expressed concern at American actions, he said:

“I really wanted to retire and rest and spend more time with my children, my grandchildren and of course with my wife. But the problems are such that for anybody with a conscience who can use whatever influence he may have to try to bring about peace, it’s difficult to say no.” (10 September 2002)

He has also campaigned to highlight the issue of HIV / AIDS in South Africa.

Mandela was married three times, fathered six children, and had 17 grandchildren. His first wife was Evelyn Ntoko Mase. His second wife was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, they split after an acrimonious dispute. Winnie was alleged to have an involvement in human rights abuses. Mandela married for a third time on his 80th birthday to Graça Machel.

Graça Michel, Sri Chinmoy and Nelson Mandela holding Peace Torch. Source

Nelson Mandela was often referred to as Madiba – his Xhosa clan name.

Nelson Mandela died on 5 December 2013 after a long illness with his family at his side. He was 95.

At his memorial, Barack Obama, the President of the US said:

“We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela ever again, so it falls to us, as best we can, to carry forward the example that he set. He no longer belongs to us; he belongs to the ages.”

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Nelson Mandela”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net.   Published: 7th December 2013. Last updated 13th February 2018.

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Nelson Mandela

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 29, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The South African activist and former president Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) helped bring an end to apartheid and has been a global advocate for human rights. A member of the African National Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he was a leader of both peaceful protests and armed resistance against the white minority’s oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa. His actions landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the antiapartheid movement both within his country and internationally. Released in 1990, he participated in the eradication of apartheid and in 1994 became the first Black president of South Africa, forming a multiethnic government to oversee the country’s transition. After retiring from politics in 1999, he remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own nation and around the world until his death in 2013 at the age of 95.

Nelson Mandela’s Childhood and Education

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, into a royal family of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe in the South African village of Mvezo, where his father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (c. 1880-1928), served as chief. His mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of Mphakanyiswa’s four wives, who together bore him nine daughters and four sons. After the death of his father in 1927, 9-year-old Mandela—then known by his birth name, Rolihlahla—was adopted by Jongintaba Dalindyebo, a high-ranking Thembu regent who began grooming his young ward for a role within the tribal leadership.

Did you know? As a sign of respect, many South Africans referred to Nelson Mandela as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name.

The first in his family to receive a formal education, Mandela completed his primary studies at a local missionary school. There, a teacher dubbed him Nelson as part of a common practice of giving African students English names. He went on to attend the Clarkebury Boarding Institute and Healdtown, a Methodist secondary school, where he excelled in boxing and track as well as academics. In 1939 Mandela entered the elite University of Fort Hare, the only Western-style higher learning institute for Black South Africans at the time. The following year, he and several other students, including his friend and future business partner Oliver Tambo (1917-1993), were sent home for participating in a boycott against university policies.

After learning that his guardian had arranged a marriage for him, Mandela fled to Johannesburg and worked first as a night watchman and then as a law clerk while completing his bachelor’s degree by correspondence. He studied law at the University of Witwatersrand, where he became involved in the movement against racial discrimination and forged key relationships with Black and white activists. In 1944, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) and worked with fellow party members, including Oliver Tambo, to establish its youth league, the ANCYL. That same year, he met and married his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase (1922-2004), with whom he had four children before their divorce in 1957.

Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress

Nelson Mandela’s commitment to politics and the ANC grew stronger after the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, which introduced a formal system of racial classification and segregation—apartheid—that restricted nonwhites’ basic rights and barred them from government while maintaining white minority rule. The following year, the ANC adopted the ANCYL’s plan to achieve full citizenship for all South Africans through boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and other nonviolent methods. Mandela helped lead the ANC’s 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, traveling across the country to organize protests against discriminatory policies, and promoted the manifesto known as the Freedom Charter, ratified by the Congress of the People in 1955. Also in 1952, Mandela and Tambo opened South Africa’s first Black law firm, which offered free or low-cost legal counsel to those affected by apartheid legislation.

On December 5, 1956, Mandela and 155 other activists were arrested and went on trial for treason. All of the defendants were acquitted in 1961, but in the meantime tensions within the ANC escalated, with a militant faction splitting off in 1959 to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). The next year, police opened fire on peaceful Black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people; as panic, anger and riots swept the country in the massacre’s aftermath, the apartheid government banned both the ANC and the PAC. Forced to go underground and wear disguises to evade detection, Mandela decided that the time had come for a more radical approach than passive resistance.

Nelson Mandela and the Armed Resistance Movement

In 1961, Nelson Mandela co-founded and became the first leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), also known as MK, a new armed wing of the ANC. Several years later, during the trial that would put him behind bars for nearly three decades, he described the reasoning for this radical departure from his party’s original tenets: “[I]t would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and nonviolence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle.”

Under Mandela’s leadership, MK launched a sabotage campaign against the government, which had recently declared South Africa a republic and withdrawn from the British Commonwealth. In January 1962, Mandela traveled abroad illegally to attend a conference of African nationalist leaders in Ethiopia, visit the exiled Oliver Tambo in London and undergo guerilla training in Algeria. On August 5, shortly after his return, he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to five years in prison for leaving the country and inciting a 1961 workers’ strike. The following July, police raided an ANC hideout in Rivonia, a suburb on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and arrested a racially diverse group of MK leaders who had gathered to debate the merits of a guerilla insurgency. Evidence was found implicating Mandela and other activists, who were brought to stand trial for sabotage, treason and violent conspiracy alongside their associates.

Mandela and seven other defendants narrowly escaped the gallows and were instead sentenced to life imprisonment during the so-called Rivonia Trial, which lasted eight months and attracted substantial international attention. In a stirring opening statement that sealed his iconic status around the world, Mandela admitted to some of the charges against him while defending the ANC’s actions and denouncing the injustices of apartheid. He ended with the following words: “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.”

Nelson Mandela’s Years Behind Bars

Nelson Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island Prison, a former leper colony off the coast of Cape Town, where he was confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing and compelled to do hard labor in a lime quarry. As a Black political prisoner, he received scantier rations and fewer privileges than other inmates. He was only allowed to see his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (1936-), who he had married in 1958 and was the mother of his two young daughters, once every six months. Mandela and his fellow prisoners were routinely subjected to inhumane punishments for the slightest of offenses; among other atrocities, there were reports of guards burying inmates in the ground up to their necks and urinating on them.

These restrictions and conditions notwithstanding, while in confinement Mandela earned a bachelor of law degree from the University of London and served as a mentor to his fellow prisoners, encouraging them to seek better treatment through nonviolent resistance. He also smuggled out political statements and a draft of his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” published five years after his release.

Despite his forced retreat from the spotlight, Mandela remained the symbolic leader of the antiapartheid movement. In 1980 Oliver Tambo introduced a “Free Nelson Mandela” campaign that made the jailed leader a household name and fueled the growing international outcry against South Africa’s racist regime. As pressure mounted, the government offered Mandela his freedom in exchange for various political compromises, including the renouncement of violence and recognition of the “independent” Transkei Bantustan, but he categorically rejected these deals.

In 1982 Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland, and in 1988 he was placed under house arrest on the grounds of a minimum-security correctional facility. The following year, newly elected president F. W. de Klerk (1936-) lifted the ban on the ANC and called for a nonracist South Africa, breaking with the conservatives in his party. On February 11, 1990, he ordered Mandela’s release.

Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa

After attaining his freedom, Nelson Mandela led the ANC in its negotiations with the governing National Party and various other South African political organizations for an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. Though fraught with tension and conducted against a backdrop of political instability, the talks earned Mandela and de Klerk the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993. On April 26, 1994, more than 22 million South Africans turned out to cast ballots in the country’s first multiracial parliamentary elections in history. An overwhelming majority chose the ANC to lead the country, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as the first Black president of South Africa, with de Klerk serving as his first deputy.

As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights and political violations committed by both supporters and opponents of apartheid between 1960 and 1994. He also introduced numerous social and economic programs designed to improve the living standards of South Africa’s Black population. In 1996 Mandela presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution, which established a strong central government based on majority rule and prohibited discrimination against minorities, including whites.

Improving race relations, discouraging Blacks from retaliating against the white minority and building a new international image of a united South Africa were central to President Mandela’s agenda. To these ends, he formed a multiracial “Government of National Unity” and proclaimed the country a “rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.” In a gesture seen as a major step toward reconciliation, he encouraged Blacks and whites alike to rally around the predominantly Afrikaner national rugby team when South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

On his 80th birthday in 1998, Mandela wed the politician and humanitarian Graça Machel (1945-), widow of the former president of Mozambique. (His marriage to Winnie had ended in divorce in 1992.) The following year, he retired from politics at the end of his first term as president and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki (1942-) of the ANC.

Nelson Mandela’s Later Years and Legacy

After leaving office, Nelson Mandela remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own country and around the world. He established a number of organizations, including the influential Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Elders, an independent group of public figures committed to addressing global problems and easing human suffering. In 2002, Mandela became a vocal advocate of AIDS awareness and treatment programs in a culture where the epidemic had been cloaked in stigma and ignorance. The disease later claimed the life of his son Makgatho (1950-2005) and is believed to affect more people in South Africa than in any other country.

Treated for prostate cancer in 2001 and weakened by other health issues, Mandela grew increasingly frail in his later years and scaled back his schedule of public appearances. In 2009, the United Nations declared July 18 “Nelson Mandela International Day” in recognition of the South African leader’s contributions to democracy, freedom, peace and human rights around the world. Nelson Mandela died on December 5, 2013 from a recurring lung infection.

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Nelson Mandela Resource Guide: Nelson Mandela Biography

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Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela at the Gracie Mansion, 1990

Nelson Mandela Portrait Collection. 

Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black  Culture.

The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

©Chester Higgins/chesterhiggins.com

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in Mvezo, a small village on the banks of the Mbashe River in the Eastern Cape Province. He was born into the Madiba clan, son of Nonqaphi Nosekeni and Gladla Henry Mphakanyiswa, the chief of Mvezo and an advisor to the kings.

Mandela was the first in his family to receive a formal education; After primary school, he attended the University of Fort Hare, the only Western-style academic education for South African blacks at the time. At Fort Hare, he studied English, anthropology, politics, native administration, and Roman Dutch law. Due to his involvement in a student protest, he was expelled in 1940 and did not complete his degree at the University. However, Mandela later completed his degree at the University of South Africa.

Following his expulsion, Mandela moved to Johannesburg in 1941. This move opened his eyes not only to an industrial city   but to a nation of injustice separated by races. For the first time in his life, he saw himself as a black man in a white society. He began working as a law clerk with Walter Sisulu, a prominent black businessman active in the African National Congress (ANC). It wasn’t until 1944 when Mandela joined the ANC and helped form the ANC Youth League (ANCYL). In 1947, he was elected to his first position in the ANC as the Executive Committee.

After the election of 1948, the National Party gained power in South Africa. Consequently, this began a  formal system of racial classification and segregation; this formal system, apartheid, restricted nonwhites’ basic rights and barred them from the government, while also maintaining white minority rule. Mandela’s commitment to politics and the ANC grew stronger after this election.

By 1952, he was the President of the ANCYL and had drawn much attention from the South African government. Subsequently, he was served a banning order that restricted his freedom of speech and movement. This banning order forced Mandela to not attend public meetings, or discuss an important matter with no more than one person at a time. This was an attempt by the government to break apart the ANC. As the oppression increased, so did Mandela’s efforts. In June 1952, he led the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, where groups throughout South Africa executed various acts of defiance in main cities. It was the first large-scale, multi-racial political mobilization against the apartheid laws. Mandela fought the Apartheid politically and professionally. That same year, he and his colleague Oliver Tambo, an ANC leader, established the first black law practices that specialized in cases affected by the apartheid legislation.

The South African government was putting pressure on the ANC, and on December 5, 1956, Mandela’s house was raided and he was arrested amongst 155 other activists being charged with high treason. The Treason Trials dragged on for almost five years, however, the defendants were finally acquitted in 1961. During this time, Mandela met his wife Winifred Nomzamo Madikizela when she was 22, standing at a bus stop in Soweto . They married on June 14, 1958, and had two daughters, Zenani and Zindzi .  

On March 21, 1960, police opened fire on a massive, organized demonstration against the Pass Laws, killing 69 unarmed peaceful demonstrators at Sharpeville . The country erupted into a state of emergency and numerous activists were arrested. Days later Mandela burnt his pass book in front of numerous journalists. The following month the ANC was declared an illegal organization, which caused Mandela and other ANC leaders to go underground and form a separate military wing called Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) also referred to as MK. He became the first commander-in-chief of the guerrilla army and began to train to fight, obtain weapons for the group. Mandela came to be known as the Black Pimpernel.

Mandela traveled abroad illegally in 1962 gaining support, money and military training from various African countries. On his return, he was arrested for leaving the country and for orchestrating strikes. On the day of his court case, he entered court wearing traditional Xhosa clothing making a statement of African nationalism. Mandela was sentenced to five years imprisonment for incitement to strike and leaving the country without official documents.

While imprisoned, the police raided the ANC underground headquarters on a farm in Rivonia and its military commanders were arrested. Based on the collected evidence, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them. Known as the Rivonia Trials, on October 8, 1963, they were charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the state violently. The trial lasted for months. On April 20, 1964, Mandela gave his famous speech where he exclaimed that he was “prepared to die” for a free and democratic South Africa. The trial ended on June 12, 1964, and Mandela and the other accused were found guilty of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mandela arrived on Robben Island in the winter of 1964 where he spent 18 of his 27 prison years (1964 to 1982). The South African government built a new maximum security building especially for political prisoners to keep them away from the other prisoners. The security believed the political prisoners would influence the other prisoners. At the prison, the prisoners were categorized from A to D, and due to his transgressions, Mandela was ranked D, which allowed him the least amount of privileges. He was allowed to send and receive one letter in six months and have only one visitor. Winnie Mandela visited in 1965 and wasn’t allowed to visit again until December 1968. He eventually worked his way up the prison ranking system and was able to receive four visits a year, where his mother visited before her death in 1967.

He and other political prisoners were assigned work at the Lime Quarry where they dug limestone. The daily routine was to work eight hours a day breaking the limestone slate boulders into stone that was used to pave roads. The work was strenuous and unsafe since the glare from the white rocks caused impairment to the eyes.   

In 1982, Mandela and others were moved off Robben Island to Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison in a suburb of Cape Town, Tokai. Conditions were better here and he was allowed contact with his family. Due to the damp conditions at the jail, Mandela came down with tuberculosis in 1988 and as a result, he was admitted to the Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town and spent six weeks recuperating. That following December he was transferred to the Victor Verster Prison in Paarl, where he would stay for fourteen months before he was released from prison.

February 11, 1990, after 27 years behind bars, Nelson Mandela emerges from prison a free man; his release promised a new chapter in  South Africa. The president at the time, F.W. de Klerk, helped dismantle the apartheid laws, including the removal of the ban on leading liberation organizations such as the Mandela delivered his first speech at the Cape Town’s City Hall on his release day. Mandela continued to immerse himself in politics, holding meetings and giving official talks and speeches. He was elected president of the ANC in 1991 in South Africa’s first non-racial election. Mandela and President de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their work towards abolishing apartheid.

May 10, 1994, at the age of 77, Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president at the Union Building in Pretoria. The ceremony was televised internationally, while numerous people gathered to see in the inauguration speech. During his presidency, he worked towards rebuilding South Africa’s economy that was in crisis from the apartheid, as well as poverty, inequalities, unequal access to social services, and infrastructure.

At the end of one term, Mandela gave his last address to the South African nation and retired from active politics in February 1999. After leaving office, he continued to lend his efforts to humanitarian services. However, his health deteriorated and Mandela was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2001. Despite his prognosis, Mandela remained active. In 2009, on his 91st birthday, the United Nations declared July 18th , as Mandela Day, in recognition of his contribution to the culture of peace and freedom. In 2010, he moved back to his home in Qunu , Eastern Cape where he receives numerous visitors, including U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, South Africa President Jacob Zuma , and ANC members. Mandela made a last public appearance at the World Cup final, at Johannesburg's Soccer City on July 11, 2010.

In March 2013, Mandela was admitted to the hospital for a lung infection. For the next months, he is in and out of the hospital and spends his 95th birthday there surrounded by love and support. Mandela passed away on December 10, 2013. South Africa was in deep mourning and self-reflection, and the nation observed this death for a period of 10 days. Numerous memorial services were conducted across the country. His legacy remains throughout South Africa and the world.

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Short Essay on Nelson Mandela [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF

Nelson Mandela was a political leader and a former president of South Africa. For his contribution to restoring peace and stability in the region, he is still remembered around the world. In today’s session, you will learn about the life of Nelson Mandela in order to write an essay on this eminent person for your upcoming exam.

Table of Contents

• Short Essay on Nelson Mandela in 100 Words 
• Short Essay on Nelson Mandela in 200 Words 
• Short Essay on Nelson Mandela in 400 Words 

Short Essay on Nelson Mandela in 100 Words

Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest leaders and freedom fighters of South Africa. He was born on 18th July 1918. He studied law and became a successful lawyer. While practising law, he got involved in anti-apartheid, anti-colonial, nationalist movements and soon joined the African National Congress.

South Africa, at that time, was ruled by a white-only government and blacks were discriminated against in their own country. Mandela, along with other revolutionaries, fought against the oppressive rule. Because of their efforts, the white supremacist government was finally overthrown and Nelson Mandela became the first president of a multi-racial democratic South Africa in 1994. He was also the country’s first black president. He died on 5th December 2013, aged 95. He will always be remembered as an icon of democracy and social justice.

Short Essay on Nelson Mandela in 200 Words

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African revolutionary leader and freedom fighter who played an important role in ending apartheid in the country. He was born on 18th July 1918 in a village called Mzevo into the Thembu royal family. Although his family was illiterate, he was sent to study in a local school by his mother.

He later studied law and started working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. While he was still studying, he faced racism and saw the terrible political state of his country. Soon, he started getting involved in anti-apartheid, anti-colonial, nationalist movements and joined the African National Congress. 

South Africa, at that time, was ruled by a whites-only government, and blacks were discriminated against in their own country. Mandela, along with other revolutionaries, fought against the oppressive rule and was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. However, even after spending a total of 27 years in jail, Mandela did not give up and continued with his efforts to end apartheid in the country. 

Finally, after decades of struggle, South Africa rose as a multi-racial democratic country and Nelson Mandela became its first president in 1994. He was also the country’s first-ever black president. He was an advocate of human rights and brought peace and stability to his country. Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest leaders in the world and he will always be remembered as an icon of democracy and social justice. 

Short Essay on Nelson Mandela in 400 Words

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was one of the most important leaders in the history of South Africa as well as the world. He was born on 18th July 1918 in a village called Mzevo into the Thembu royal family. Although his family was illiterate, he was sent to study in a local school by his mother.

He later studied law and started working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. While he was still studying, he came face-to-face with racism and saw the terrible political state of his country. Soon, he started getting involved in anti-apartheid, anti-colonial, nationalist movements and joined the African National Congress. 

South Africa, at that time, was ruled by a whites-only government, and blacks were discriminated against in their own country. Mandela, along with other revolutionaries like Anton Lembede and Oliver Tambo, fought against the oppressive rule and was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned.

However, even after spending a total of 27 years in jail, Mandela did not give up and continued with his efforts to end apartheid in the country. He led defiance campaigns against the government as well as the mass stay-at-home strikes. He also joined hands with anti-apartheid leaders around the world and trained in guerilla warfare. 

Nelson Mandela and his fellow leaders worked hard to end apartheid and bring justice to the millions of black Africans who had been suffering under the white supremacist government. After decades of struggle for freedom and equality, South Africa rose as a multi-racial democratic country in 1994, with the first fully democratic elections held on 27th April 1994.

The African National Congress, under the leadership of Mandela, won the elections by a huge margin and Nelson was sworn as the first president of a democratic South Africa. He held office till 1999 and was focused on national unity and reconciliation. 

Nelson Mandela’s government worked a lot for the betterment of society, granting old-age pensions, free healthcare for young children and pregnant women, building houses, providing electricity and connectivity as well as making proper education available for kids. Even after retiring from the political scene, he continued to work towards rural development, school construction and combating HIV/AIDS. He died on 5th December 2013 after suffering from a respiratory infection. 

Nelson Mandela was an advocate of human rights and brought peace and stability to his country. He was one of the greatest leaders in the world and he will always be remembered as an icon of democracy and social justice. 

That’s all about my presentation on the life of Nelson Mandela. Hopefully, this session has become able to fulfil your requirement.  If you have any doubts regarding this session, kindly let me know through the comment section below. 

To get the latest updates on our upcoming sessions, please join us on Telegram. Thanks for being with us. All the best. 

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A Brief History of Nelson Mandela's Life

The key moments of an extraordinary life.

By The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Nelson Mandela walks out of the gates of Victor Verster prison (1990-02-11) by Gideon Mendel The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Madiba's journey

Known and loved around the world for his commitment to peace, negotiation and reconciliation, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was South Africa's first democratically elected president (1994-1999). Mandela was an anti-apartheid revolutionary and political leader, as well as a philanthropist with an abiding love for children. Mandela was born into the Xhosa royal family on 18 July 1918 and died on 5 December 2013.

Mvezo rondavels v2 (2007-04-16) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

The early years

Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in the village of Mvezo, in the Eastern Cape, on 18 July 1918. His mother was Nonqaphi Nosekeni and his father was Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo. In 1930, when he was 12 years old, his father died and the young Rolihlahla became a ward of Jongintaba at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni. Hearing the elders’ stories of his ancestors’ valour during the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people.

Childhood (2010/2010) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Gilbert Nzimeni Collection Healdtown photograph (front) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Education He attended primary school in Qunu where his teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave him the name Nelson, in accordance with the custom of giving all schoolchildren “Christian” names. He completed his Junior Certificate at Clarkebury Boarding Institute and went on to Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of some repute, where he matriculated. Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University College of Fort Hare but did not complete the degree there as he was expelled for joining in a student protest. On his return to the Great Place at Mqhekezweni the King was furious and said if he didn’t return to Fort Hare he would arrange wives for him and his cousin Justice. They ran away to Johannesburg instead, arriving there in 1941. There he worked as a mine security officer and after meeting Walter Sisulu, an estate agent, he was introduced to Lazer Sidelsky. He then did his articles through a firm of attorneys – Witkin, Eidelman and Sidelsky. He completed his BA through the University of South Africa and went back to Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943.

Mandela with his law class at the University of the Witwatersrand (1944) by WITS University archive The Nelson Mandela Foundation

University Meanwhile, he began studying for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand. By his own admission he was a poor student and left the university in 1952 without graduating. He only started studying again through the University of London after his imprisonment in 1962 but also did not complete that degree. In 1989, while in the last months of his imprisonment, he obtained an LLB through the University of South Africa. He graduated in absentia at a ceremony in Cape Town.

The Big City (2010/2010) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

NRM and Bikitsha (1941/1941) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Entering politics

Mandela, while increasingly politically involved from 1942, only joined the African National Congress in 1944 when he helped to form the ANC Youth League (ANCYL).In 1944 he married Walter Sisulu’s cousin, Evelyn Mase, a nurse. They had two sons, Madiba Thembekile "Thembi" and Makgatho, and two daughters both called Makaziwe, the first of whom died in infancy. He and his wife divorced in 1958.Mandela rose through the ranks of the ANCYL and through its efforts, the ANC adopted a more radical mass-based policy, the Programme of Action, in 1949.

scan0003 The Nelson Mandela Foundation

National Volunteer-in-Chief In 1952 he was chosen as the National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign with Maulvi Cachalia as his deputy. This campaign of civil disobedience against six unjust laws was a joint programme between the ANC and the South African Indian Congress. He and 19 others were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for their part in the campaign and sentenced to nine months of hard labour, suspended for two years.

Nelson Mandela and Jerry Moloi sparring by Bob Gosani/ BAHA The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Mandela and Tambo A two-year diploma in law on top of his BA allowed Mandela to practise law, and in August 1952 he and Oliver Tambo established a law firm called Mandela & Tambo. At the end of 1952 he was banned for the first time. As a restricted person he was only permitted to watch in secret as the Freedom Charter was adopted in Kliptown on 26 June 1955.

Treason Trial, Unthreading Mandela (2018-11-07) by Nelson Mandela Foundation The Nelson Mandela Foundation

The Treason Trial

Mandela was arrested in a countrywide police swoop on 5 December 1956, which led to the 1956 Treason Trial. Men and women of all races found themselves in the dock in the marathon trial that only ended when the last 28 accused, including Mandela, were acquitted on 29 March 1961.

The Prisoner (2010/2010) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Nelson Mandela with his dog Gompo by Alf Khumalo The Nelson Mandela Foundation

State of emergency On 21 March 1960 police killed 69 unarmed people in a protest in Sharpeville against the pass laws. This led to the country’s first state of emergency and the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) on 8 April. Mandela and his colleagues in the Treason Trial were among thousands detained during the state of emergency.

Amy Thornton-Reitstein (1994-01-01) Original Source: To download a photograph click here

Spear of the Nation Days before the end of the Treason Trial, Mandela travelled to Pietermaritzburg to speak at the All-in Africa Conference, which resolved that he should write to Prime Minister Verwoerd requesting a national convention on a non-racial constitution, and to warn that should he not agree there would be a national strike against South Africa becoming a republic. After he and his colleagues were acquitted in the Treason Trial, Mandela went underground and began planning a national strike for 29, 30 and 31 March. In the face of massive mobilisation of state security the strike was called off early. In June 1961 he was asked to lead the armed struggle and helped to establish Umkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation), which launched on 16 December 1961 with a series of explosions.

Winni and Mandela getting married (1958-06) by UWC, Robben Island , Mayibuye archives / Eli Weinberg The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Marriage During the trial Mandela married a social worker, Winnie Madikizela, on 14 June 1958. They had two daughters, Zenani and Zindziswa. The couple divorced in 1996.

AT040-13 Mandela Algeria (1962) by UWC, Robben Island , Mayibuye archives The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Undercover On 11 January 1962, using the adopted name David Motsamayi, Mandela secretly left South Africa. He travelled around Africa and visited England to gain support for the armed struggle. He received military training in Morocco and Ethiopia and returned to South Africa in July 1962. He was arrested in a police roadblock outside Howick on 5 August while returning from KwaZulu-Natal, where he had briefed ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli about his trip.

Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu by Unknown Robben Island Museum

Sentenced to 5 years in prison He was charged with leaving the country without a permit and inciting workers to strike. He was convicted and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, which he began serving at the Pretoria Local Prison. On 27 May 1963 he was transferred to Robben Island and returned to Pretoria on 12 June. Within a month police raided Liliesleaf, a secret hideout in Rivonia, Johannesburg, used by ANC and Communist Party activists, and several of his comrades were arrested.

8 Rivonia Trialists (1964) by Unknown Robben Island Museum

The Rivonia Trial On 9 October 1963 Mandela joined 10 others on trial for sabotage in what became known as the Rivonia Trial. While facing the death penalty his words to the court at the end of his famous "Speech from the Dock" on 20 April 1964 became immortalised: “During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. 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 will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Speech from the Dock quote by Nelson Mandela on 20 April 1964

Robben Island group of prisoners (1977-04-25) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Robben Island On 11 June 1964 Mandela and seven other accused, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni, were convicted and the next day were sentenced to life imprisonment. Goldberg was sent to Pretoria Prison because he was white, while the others went to Robben Island.

Life in prison Mandela’s mother died in 1968 and his eldest son, Thembi, in 1969. He was not allowed to attend their funerals.

Release Mandela Original Source: Graeme Williams / South Photos

From freedom to liberation On 31 March 1982 Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town with Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni. Kathrada joined them in October. When he returned to the prison in November 1985 after prostate surgery, Mandela was held alone. Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee visited him in hospital. Later Mandela initiated talks about an ultimate meeting between the apartheid government and the ANC.

Release from prison

On 12 August 1988 he was taken to hospital where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After more than three months in two hospitals he was transferred on 7 December 1988 to a house at Victor Verster Prison near Paarl where he spent his last 14 months of imprisonment. He was released from its gates on Sunday 11 February 1990, nine days after the unbanning of the ANC and the PAC and nearly four months after the release of his remaining Rivonia comrades. Throughout his imprisonment he had rejected at least three conditional offers of release.

Inauguration of President Nelson Mandela (1994-05-10) Original Source: Guy Stubbs

Nobel Peace Prize Mandela immersed himself in official talks to end white minority rule and in 1991 was elected ANC President to replace his ailing friend, Oliver Tambo. In 1993 he and President FW de Klerk jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize and on 27 April 1994 he voted for the first time in his life.

Nelson Mandela signing the 'President's Bible' (1994-05-10) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

On 10 May 1994 he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected President. On his 80th birthday in 1998 he married Graça Machel, his third wife. 

The Statesman (2010/2010) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Retiring from Retirement (2007-06/2007-06) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Retirement True to his promise, Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one term as President. He continued to work with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund he set up in 1995 and established the Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Mandela Rhodes Foundation.

Madiba at Home - Mvezo (2005-07-18/2005-07-18) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Mvezo and Mandla Mandela In April 2007 his grandson, Mandla Mandela, was installed as head of the Mvezo Traditional Council at a ceremony at the Mvezo Great Place.

Mandela's body being transported (2013-12-14) by Gallo images /Foto24/ Deaan Vivier The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Mandela's legacy Nelson Mandela died at his home in Johannesburg on 5 December 2013.

Mandela at 92 (2010-07-17) The Nelson Mandela Foundation

Nelson Mandela never wavered in his devotion to democracy, equality and learning. Despite terrible provocation, he never answered racism with racism. His life is an inspiration to all who are oppressed and deprived; and to all who are opposed to oppression and deprivation.

Robben Island Prison Tour

Robben island museum, 11 february 1990: mandela's release from prison, africa media online, nelson mandela's fight to empower the next generation, the nelson mandela foundation, in their own words: recollections of former political prisoners, what happened at the treason trial, a virtual exhibition on the life and times of nelson mandela, poster power: protest art from south africa, 9 august 1956: the women's anti-pass march, what happened when nelson mandela previewed his prison archive, a timeline of robben island from 700,000 bce to 1845 ce, the signs that defined the apartheid.

April 12, 2024

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Short Bio » Politician » Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was a South African politician. He served as the President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black President of South Africa. Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest men in history. He mainly fought against racism, poverty and Social Inequality during his life. He is without any doubt an icon for humanity.

Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July 1918. He was born in a village called Mvezo in Cape Province. He was born as Rolihlahla Mandela . He was later known by his clan name Madiba. Nelson Mandela was born to Gadla Mphakanyiswa. His father was the local chief of his village. Gadla was polygamist and had four wives. He loved African history as a child. He attended a Methodist school. At the age of 16 he was ritually circumcised. The ritual signifies the transition from a boy to man. Nelson Mandela then joined a college to get a Bachelor’s degree. But due to a situation he was suspended. He left without getting a degree. After that Nelson Mandela moved to Johannesburg. There he worked as a night guard. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in 1943. He later started his law studies. Soon after that he was fighting against racism in South Africa. He was accused of treason. He was arrested in 1956. He was released due to Martial Law. The trial for the case ended with the Verdict of Not Guilty. He was arrested in 1962. Since then he has been moved from one prison to another. He was released in 1990 from prison. He completed LLB degree from prison. In 1994 Nelson Mandela was elected as the President of South Africa. He was the first black chief executive of South Africa. He held the position until 1999. Nelson Mandela lived a simple life. He donated one third of his annual income to Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.

Nelson Mandela was married three times. Nelson Mandela married his third wife Graça Machel in 1988. He married her on his 80th birthday. Nelson Mandela had six children and 17 grandchildren. He was friends with Michael Jackson and Queen Elizabeth . He was known to have a good sense of humor. He died on 5 December 2013 due to respiratory infection. The whole world paid tributes to this legend of humanity.

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Nelson Mandela: His Life In His Words And The Words Of Others

Joe Richman

In April 1994, the world watched as millions of South Africans, most of them jubilant but many wary, cast their ballots in that nation's first multiracial election. Ten years later, NPR broadcast "Mandela: An Audio History," by producers Joe Richman and Sue Johnson of Radio Diaries. The radio documentary tells the story of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Nelson Mandela through the leader's own words, the voices those who fought with him, as well as those who fought against him. You can listen to a segment of the documentary by clicking play on the audio above, or you can listen to the full hour-long documentary, and read a timeline of his life, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/12/05/249122215/nelson-mandela-an-audio-history?live=1">here</a>.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And as we remember, Nelson Mandela, we turn now to the history that shaped the former South African president. In 2004, we broadcast a series of documentaries about Mandela. We're going to hear the first installment from that series, titled "Mandela: An Audio History" by producers Joe Richman and Sue Johnson of Radio Diaries. It's told through the voices of Mandela, those who fought alongside him, and those who fought against him. Nelson Mandela was one of thousands of black South Africans who flocked to Johannesburg in the 1940s in search of work. By 1948, he was a young lawyer and activist, when a new political party came into power with a new idea: the separation of whites and blacks. It was the birth of apartheid.

NELSON MANDELA: I remember when I arrived in Johannesburg in the early '40s. The fear, you know, of the power of the white man inhibited us a great deal, and the government was becoming very tough.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: ...the (unintelligible) government of Pretoria, while South Africa's newly elected prime minister, Dr. Milan, was sworn in at the beginning of a new chapter of South Africa's history.

MANDELA: I remember I came out of Park Station that morning and bought a newspaper, and learned that the National Party had won. And comrade, Oliver Campbell, said, well, I like this, because we now know that we have an enemy in power. And I think that we're going to have a better opportunity of mobilizing our people. So, when they came into power, it became clear that we were going to be put under a very severe test.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: In these circumstances, the government has decided on the following measures: a prohibition on meetings has been...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: And immediately after 1948, the apartheid government announced that it was introducing a new series of laws.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: The Group Areas Act, there was an Immorality Act, said that you couldn't have sexual relations across the color line, race stratification, which laid down, for all time, your color and your category - white, colored, Indian or black.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: The colored man must always carry these passes.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Photographs are taken at the offices of the Department of Native Affairs. Daily, a large number turns up for reference books. Each book contains the photograph of the owner, his name, race and particulars of employment.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #6: They used a screwed method of putting a pencil through your hair. If the pencil sticks, then you are black or African. If it falls off, you've got a chance of being classified colored.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Naturally, the officials who are employed here must have a thorough knowledge of Bantu customs and languages.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #7: Each time you left your home, you had to make sure that you have a little book in your pocket. And if you didn't have that piece of paper, some ignorant, stupid youngster in the police force could stop you and demand that you identify yourself. If you couldn't, they locked you up. The feeling among the vast majority of people is that the system cannot continue and must do something about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #8: Several hundred natives gathered peaceably to protest the (unintelligible) laws.

Police, mounted on tanks opened fire. 69 natives were killed, 176 wounded. Some of the dead were children, women, and elderly men.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #9: Here were people, just marching (unintelligible) a passbook, and police open fire. For the first time, it showed the world how brutal the apartheid system could be.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #10: The prime minister assured the country that law and order would be maintained, if necessary the defense force would be called in.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #11: The ANC had been declared illegal during the state of emergency, so Oliver Tambo sent out of the country. And some of the other leaders followed. Mandela, it was decided, should stay in the country. And he carried on his work underground.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #12: I went to see the 42-year-old African lawyer, Nelson Mandela, the most dynamic leader in South Africa today. The police were hunting for him at the time but African nationalists arranged for me to meet him at his hideout. He is still underground. This is Mandela's first television interview. I asked him what is was that the African really wanted.

MANDELA: The Africans require the franchise on the basis of one man, one vote. They want political independence.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #12: Now if Dr. Devork's(ph) government doesn't give you the kind of concessions that you want sometime soon, is there any likelihood of violence?

MANDELA: There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence against the government (unintelligible) is only (unintelligible) on an unarmed and defenseless people. And I think the time has come...

I had made a statement where I called for armed struggle. Naturally there was a great deal of resistance, but I believed that the government had left us with no other alternative.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #13: At the end of 1961 the bombing campaign started. Its targets? Power supplies, post offices, telephone booths and (unintelligible) offices - objects, not people. The aim was to shock the government into negotiating.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #14: We were branded terrorists by the whole Western world. And we didn't have nothing to lose (unintelligible). Well, as one man said, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #15: We used to sing a song. One stick, two stick, three sticks of dynamite. We'll take the country the Castro way. Now, remember Castro's campaign was a very short campaign. Within the space of two years they had overrun Cuba. So here were, the (unintelligible), all singing this song, as if to say, in six months' time we'd be free. Six months' time we were languishing in prison.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Mandela, he had addressed a meeting in (unintelligible). He was coming back and the police stopped him. And they asked him what was his name, and he said David. And they said you're under arrest, Mr. Mandela.

BLOCK: You've been listening to "Mandela: An Audio History" produced by Radio Diaries. We heard the voices of Nelson Mandela, Dullah Omar, Helen Suzman, Ahmed Kathrada, Nthato Motlana, Lungi Sisulu, Mac Maharaj, and Amina Cachalia.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Nelson Mandela Biography

Nelson Mandela was a civil rights leader, who fought against apartheid, or racial discrimination against blacks, in South Africa. Mandela was born on July 18 in South Africa in 1918. His name was Rolihlahla which meant trouble maker. When Mandela was nine years old, he was adopted by his father’s friend. A teacher gave him the name Nelson when he was a child. Mandela studied law and opened South Africa’s first black law firm.

Political Career

Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) to fight against apartheid. At first, he wanted the ANC to follow Mohandas Gandhi’s non violent protest methods. After the ANC was banned in 1960, he led a secret army called ‘Spear of the Nation.’ He traveled to other countries to ask for help. Later, he began to doubt the effectiveness of Gandhi’s methods. He wanted to bomb some buildings, but not hurt anyone. The government called him a terrorist and jailed him, in 1962. He spent 27 years in prison. There was an international campaign for his release. Other countries stopped trading and playing sports with South Africa. Finally, Mandela was released from prison in 1990. His work paid off when all races were allowed to vote in the 1994 election for the first time. He won the election and became the first black President of South Africa. He retired in 1999. He died on 5 December 2013, after a lung illness.

Achievements

He received the Peace Prize in 1993. Mandela has received over 695 awards. This is the maximum number of awards anyone has ever got. On his birthday, Nelson Mandela Day, people are asked to spend 67 minutes helping others. Why 67? He spent 67 years serving South Africa.

Nelson Mandela Quotes

• Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world.
• Lead from the back- and let others believe they are in front.
• It always seems impossible until it’s done.
• There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.
• I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

To read more interesting biographies of famous people, browse though our huge collection of short biographies for kids.

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Learners' biography

Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in Mvezo, Transkei, on 18 July 1918.

His mother was Nonqaphi Nosekeni and his father, Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, was the main advisor to the Acting King of the Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo.

He received the name "Nelson" on his first day in primary school from his teacher Miss Mdingane. When he was 12 his father died and he was raised by the Regent at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni. He was sent to the best schools available and began studying a BA at Fort Hare University.

When he was expelled for joining a student protest, the Regent told him to return or get married. So he ran away to Johannesburg with his cousin Justice. His first job in 1941 was as a security guard on a gold mine and then as a legal clerk in the law firm Witkin, Edelman and Sidelsky. At the same time he completed his BA through Unisa.

In 1943 he enrolled for an LLB at Wits University. He was a poor student and became more involved in politics from 1944 after he helped to start the ANC Youth League. He married in the same year and needed money to support his family.

By mid-1952 when the university asked him to pay the 27 pounds he owed or leave, he already had three children. He only started studying again in 1962 in prison. He finally graduated with an LLB through Unisa 27 years later.

Later in 1952 he became the National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign against apartheid laws. He and 19 others were later charged and sentenced to nine months, suspended for two years. In August he and Oliver Tambo started South Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela & Tambo.

In those days one could practise as an attorney with a two-year diploma. Later that year he was banned for the first time – he had to ask the government for permission whenever he needed to leave Johannesburg. After the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955, 156 people were arrested and charged with treason. The trial lasted four-and-a-half years until 29 March 1961 by which time all were acquitted. The ANC and PAC were banned after the 21 March 1961 killing by police of 69 unarmed protesters in Sharpeville.

Mandela called on the government not to turn South Africa into a republic on 31 May 1961 but to discuss a non-racial constitution. He was ignored so he called for a strike on 29, 30 and 31 March.

In June 1961 he was asked to lead the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe and it launched on 16 December that year. On 11 January 1962, Mandela secretly left South Africa to undergo military training and to get support from African countries for the armed struggle.

He was arrested on 5 August and charged with leaving the country illegally and encouraging the strike. He was convicted and sentenced on 7 November 1962 to five years in prison.

On 11 July 1963, a secret hideout he once used was raided by police. On 9 October 1963 he joined 10 others on trial for sabotage in the Rivonia Trial.

On 12 June 1964 he and seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment. While he was in prison his mother and his eldest son died. He was not allowed to attend their funerals.

He spent 18 years on Robben Island, and while at Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town in 1985 he had to go to hospital. When Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee visited him, he had an idea: to see if the government wanted to talk about one day meeting with the ANC.

In 1988 he was taken to hospital for tuberculosis. Three months later he was moved to Victor Verster Prison where he spent his last 14 months in prison. He was released on Sunday 11 February 1990, nine days after the unbanning of the ANC and the PAC.

Other political prisoners were freed and exiles returned. The ANC began talking to the government about South Africa’s future. For this work he and President FW de Klerk won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and on 27 April 1994, Mandela voted in South Africa’s first democratic elections.

On 10 May 1994, he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected President and stepped down after one term. In his retirement he worked on building schools and clinics, highlighting HIV, children and leadership. He died at his home in Johannesburg on 5 December 2013.

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• Nelson Mandela Biography

The first President of South Africa to be elected in entirely representative democratic elections was Nelson Mandela. He was a prominent anti-apartheid radical and leader of the African National Congress before his presidency, who spent 27 years in jail for his participation in the activities of clandestine armed resistance and sabotage.

About Nelson Mandela

Full Name - Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Date of Birth - July 18, 1918

Date of Death - December 5, 2013

Cause of Death - Prolonged respiratory infection

Age - 95 years

Nelson Mandela spouse(s) -

Evelyn Ntoko Mase (m. 1944; div. 1958)​

Winnie Madikizela (m. 1958; div. 1996)

Graça Machel ​(m. 1998)

Who is Nelson Mandela?

Nelson Mandela belonged to the Thembu Dynasty cadet branch which reigned (nominally) in the Transkeian Territories of the Cape Province Union of South Africa. He was born in the small village of Qunu in the Mthatha district, the capital of the Transkei. Ngubengcuka (died 1830), the Inkosi Enkulu or King of the Thembu people, was his great-grandfather and was ultimately subjected to British colonial rule. One of the king's sons, named Mandela, became Nelson's grandfather and the source of his surname.

His father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (1880-1928) was appointed chief of the village of Mvezo. However, he was stripped of his position after alienating the colonial authorities and he moved his family to Qunu. Gadla, however, remained a member of the Privy Council of Inkosi and was instrumental in the ascension of Jongintaba Dalindyebo to the Thembu throne, who would later return this favor by informally adopting Mandela upon the death of Gadla.

Mandela's father had four wives, with whom he fathered a total of 13 children (four boys and nine girls). Nosekeni Fanny, daughter of Nkedama of the Mpemvu Xhosa tribe, in whose homestead Mandela spent most of his childhood, was born to Gadla's third wife ('third' by a complex royal ranking system). His given name, Rolihlahla, means "one who brings trouble upon himself."

Nelson Mandela Education

Rolihlahla Mandela became the first member of his family to attend a school at the age of seven, where a Methodist teacher gave him the name 'Nelson,' after the British admiral Horatio Nelson. When Rolihlahla was nine, his father died of tuberculosis, and the Regent, Jongintaba, became his guardian. Mandela was attending a Wesleyan mission school next door to the Regent's palace. He was initiated at age 16, adopting Thembu tradition, and attended Clarkebury Boarding Institute, learning about Western culture. Instead of the standard three, he completed his Junior Certificate in two years.

In 1937, Mandela moved to Healdtown, the Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort, which was attended by most Thembu royalty, as he was supposed to inherit the place of his father as a private counselor. He took an interest in boxing and running at the age of nineteen. After registering, he began studying for a B.A. and met Oliver Tambo at Fort Hare University, where the two became lifelong friends and colleagues. He became active in a protest by the Students' Representative Council against university policies at the end of his first year and was forced to leave Fort Hare.

Mandela initially found employment as a guard at a mine upon his arrival in Johannesburg. This was quickly terminated, however, after the employer learned that Mandela was the runaway adopted son of the Regent. Thanks to connections with his friend and fellow lawyer Walter Sisulu, he then managed to find work as a clerk at a law firm. He completed his degree at the University of South Africa (UNISA) through correspondence while working, after which he began his law studies at the University of Witwatersrand. Mandela lived in a township called Alexandra during that time.

About Nelson Mandela Marriage and Family

Nelson Mandela married thrice and had fathered six children, 20 grandchildren, and an increasing number of great-grandchildren. His first marriage was to Evelyn Ntoko Mase, who, like Mandela, was also from what later became South Africa's Transkei region. They first met in Johannesburg.  The couple had two sons, Madiba Thembekile (born 1946) and Makgatho (born 1950), and two daughters, both named Makaziwe (known as Maki; born 1947 and 1953).

Nelson Mandela’s second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, was also from the Transkei region, even though they also met in Johannesburg, where she was the first black social worker in the city. The marriage bore two daughters, Zenani (Zeni), born on February 4, 1958, and Zindziswa (Zindzi), born in 1960. The union, fuelled by political estrangement, ended in separation (April 1992) and divorce (March 1996).

In 1998, on his 80th birthday, Mandela married Graça Machel, née Simbine, the widow of Samora Machel, a former Mozambican president and an ANC ally killed 12 years earlier in an air crash. His traditional sovereign, King Buyelekhaya Zwelibanzi Dalindyebo, born in 1964, carried out the wedding on Mandela's behalf (which followed months of international negotiations to fix the unparalleled bride price sent to her clan). Ironically, it was the grandfather of this paramount leader, the Regent, whose selection of a bride for him compelled Mandela to flee as a young man to Johannesburg. 

About Nelson Mandela Political Activity

Nelson Mandela was influential in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Movement and the 1955 People's Congress. They adopted the Freedom Charter which provided the basic program of the anti-apartheid cause, after the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party with its apartheid racial segregation policy. Nelson Mandela and fellow lawyer Oliver Tambo ran the Mandela and Tambo law firm during this period, offering free or low-cost legal advice to many blacks who would otherwise have been without legal representation.

Initially influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and devoted to non-violent mass struggle, on December 5, 1956, Mandela was arrested and charged with treason along with 150 others. The 1956-1961 marathon Treason Trial followed, and all were acquitted. As a new class of black activists (Africanists) emerged in the townships seeking more drastic action against the National Party government, the ANC witnessed disruption from 1952-1959. Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo, and Walter Sisulu's ANC leadership thought not only that events were moving too rapidly, but also that their leadership was being questioned.

The ANC lost its most militant support in 1959 when, under Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo, most of the Africanists, with financial support from Ghana and major political support from the Transvaal-based Basotho, split away to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).

Arrest and Imprisonment 

In 1961, Nelson Mandela became the chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, also abbreviated as MK), the armed wing of the ANC, which he co-founded. He coordinated a campaign of sabotage against military and government objectives and if sabotage failed to end apartheid, made preparations for a future guerrilla war. MK did indeed wage a guerrilla war against the regime a few decades later, especially during the 1980s, in which many civilians were killed. Mandela also collected funds and organized paramilitary training for MK overseas, visiting different African governments.

He was captured after living on the run for 17 months on August 5, 1962, and imprisoned in the Johannesburg Fort. Three days later, at a court appearance, the charges of leading workers to a strike in 1961 and leaving the country illegally were read to him. Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison on October 25, 1962.

On June 11th, 1964, two years later, a verdict was reached concerning his prior participation in the African National Congress (ANC). Nelson Mandela was incarcerated on Robben Island for the next 18 of his 27 years in prison. It was there that he wrote the bulk of his 'Long Walk to Freedom' autobiography. Mandela did not disclose anything in that book about the suspected involvement of President F. W. De Klerk, or the role of his ex-wife Winnie Mandela in the brutality of the 1980s and early 1990s. In Mandela: The Authorized Biography, however, he later cooperated with his friend, journalist Anthony Sampson, who addressed these issues.

Mandela remained in jail rejecting an offer of conditional release in exchange for renouncing armed struggle in February 1985 until concerted ANC and international activism came up with the resounding slogan “Free Nelson Mandela!”. President de Klerk simultaneously ordered the release of Mandela in February 1990 and the revocation of the ANC ban.

Post-apartheid

On April 27, 1994, South Africa's first democratic elections were held in which full enfranchisement was given. In the election, the ANC won the vote, and Nelson Mandela, as ANC leader, was inaugurated as the country's first black president, with de Klerk of the National Party as his deputy president in the National Unity Government.

As South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Nelson Mandela urged black South Africans to get behind the previously despised Springboks (the South African national rugby team). Nelson Mandela, wearing a Springbok jersey, presented the trophy to captain Francois Pienaar, an Afrikaner after the Springboks had secured an epic final over New Zealand. This has been widely seen as a significant step in white and black South Africans' reconciliation.

It was also during his administration when, with the launch of the SUNSAT satellite in February 1999, South Africa entered the space age. It was developed by Stellenbosch University students and was used primarily to photograph land related to vegetation and forestry issues in South Africa.

Nelson Mandela Awards

Nelson Mandela has received many South African, foreign, and international awards, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, Queen Elizabeth II's Order of Merit and the Order of St. John, and George W. Bush's Presidential Medal of Freedom. In July 2004, during a ceremony in Orlando, Soweto, the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, conferred its highest honor on Mandela by granting him the freedom of the city.

As an indication of his popular international recognition, he had a speaking engagement at the SkyDome in the city of Toronto during his tour of Canada in 1998, where 45,000 school children welcomed him with intense adulation.

He was the first living person to be named an honorary Canadian citizen in 2001.

In 1992, Turkey awarded him the Ataturk Peace Prize. He declined the award, alleging abuses of human rights committed during that period by Turkey, but later accepted the award in 1999. He has also received the Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International (2006).

Retirement and Death

Nelson Mandela was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer in the summer of 2001. Mandela declared in June 2004, at the age of 85, that he would retire from public life. His health had been deteriorating, and he and his family decided to spend more time. 

He passed away on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95, after suffering from a prolonged respiratory infection. He died, surrounded by his relatives, at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg.

Some facts about Nelson Mandela

From 1994 until 1999, Nelson Mandela served as President of South Africa. He was South Africa's first black president and the first to be elected in a fully representative election.

The leadership of Nelson Mandela concentrated on overthrowing the country's Apartheid government, which had enforced racial segregation through the law.

Nelson Mandela studied law at school and then went on to become one of South Africa's first black lawyers.

He was chosen leader of the African National Congress (ANC) liberation movement's youth section in the 1950s.

Mandela established a hidden military movement after the government banned the ANC for racial reasons. He had previously participated in nonviolent protests, but as the government responded with brutality, he moved on to promote an anti-government movement.

FAQs on Nelson Mandela Biography

1. When and Where was Nelson Mandela born?

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, according to his biography. His parents named him Rolihlahla after he was born. This African name was eventually complemented with the English first name Nelson, which was given to him by his teacher, Miss Mdingane, as the name to which he should respond at school. He was born in the Transkei province of South Africa.

2. Why is he also called ‘Madiba’?

Madiba is Nelson Mandela’s clan name, indicating that he was a Madiba clan member (named after an eighteenth-century Thembu tribe chief). "I am commonly addressed as Madiba, my tribal name, as a symbol of respect," Nelson Mandela writes in his autobiography.

3. What is his educational background?

Nelson Mandela began his education at a nearby mission school. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University College of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape, at the end of 1942. Mandela then enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in early 1943 to pursue a bachelor of law degree, but he never finished it. He chose to take the qualifying exam that would allow him to practice as a full-fledged attorney in 1952 after multiple failed attempts. He graduated from law school in the year 1989.

4. When was Nelson Mandela awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? And why?

Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk, the president of South Africa at the time, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 "for their work for the peaceful end of the apartheid regime, and for establishing the foundations for a new democratic South Africa." Visit Vedantu To know more about his contribution to the establishment of a democratic republic. 

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Nelson Mandela - Biography

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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 25, 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in law in 1942. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and was aquitted in 1961.

After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela argued for the setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC. This led to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested, 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. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.

During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela's reputation grew steadily. He was widely accepted as the most significant black leader in South Africa and 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.

Nelson Mandela was released on February 18, 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. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after the organization had been banned in 1960, Mandela was elected President of the ANC while his lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver Tambo, became the organisation's National Chairperson. Mandela was the Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999 and President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.

Throughout his life, he has received international acclaim for his anti-colonial and anti-apartheid stance, having received over 250 awards, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Soviet Order of Lenin.

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Nelson Mandela Biography In 150 Words, Death, History and Facts

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Nelson Mandela Biography In 150 Words,  – Nelson Mandela, born on July 18, 1918, in South Africa , dedicated his life to fighting against racial oppression. His journey from a small village to becoming South Africa’s first black president is awe-inspiring.

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and political leader who became the country’s first black president in 1994. Born in the village of Mvezo, Mandela studied law and joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943. His activism against racial segregation and apartheid led to his imprisonment for 27 years .

Laide Bakare Biography: State, Age, Net Worth, Daughter, Husband, Father

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Released in 1990, Mandela played a crucial role in dismantling apartheid, advocating reconciliation between racial groups. In 1993, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside F.W. de Klerk. Mandela’s presidency focused on reconciliation, nation-building, and addressing social inequalities. Fondly known as “Madiba,” he remains an international symbol of resilience, forgiveness, and the struggle for human rights. Mandela passed away in 2013, leaving a lasting legacy of peace and justice.

Nelson Mandela Wikipedia, Biography Profile. 

Below is the Wikipedia Profile of Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela Biography : Early Life

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Thembu royal family . His father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, served as a local chief, and Mandela was given the forename “Rolihlahla,” which means pulling the branch of a tree or colloquially, troublemaker.

Mandela began his formal education at the University College of Fort Hare, the only Western-style higher education institution for South African blacks at the time. Later, he moved to the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law.

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Lawyer and Activist

Mandela qualified as a lawyer and opened a law practice in Johannesburg. He became involved in anti-apartheid activism and joined the African National Congress (ANC), which sought to end racial discrimination and segregation.

Defiance Campaign and ANC

In 1944, Mandela joined the ANC and quickly rose through the ranks. He played a key role in the 1952 Defiance Campaign against discriminatory laws. As apartheid policies intensified, Mandela and others in the ANC adopted more confrontational strategies.

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Arrest and Imprisonment

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In 1962, Mandela was arrested and convicted of sabotage and other charges. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent 27 years in various prisons, including the notorious Robben Island.

Release and End of Apartheid

Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990, as apartheid began to crumble. He played a crucial role in the negotiations to dismantle apartheid, leading to the country’s first democratic elections in 1994.

In 1994, Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president, marking the end of decades of institutionalized racial segregation. His presidency focused on reconciliation between the country’s racial groups and addressing the socio-economic disparities.

Reconciliation and Legacy

Mandela’s emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation earned him widespread admiration. He stepped down as president in 1999 after serving one term but continued to be active in various humanitarian causes until his retirement.

Global Icon

Mandela became a global symbol of resistance to oppression, peace, and reconciliation. He received numerous awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Later Years and Death.

• How old was Mandela when he died ?

Nelson Mandela passed away on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95. Despite his death, Mandela’s legacy continues to inspire people worldwide in the ongoing struggle for justice, equality, and human rights.

Nelson Mandela Net Worth

How Much Is Nelson Mandela Worth?  Nelson Mandela’s net worth was estimated at about $1 million at the time of his death, his true wealth base on his legacy and the impact he had on the world as a leader.

Q1: What was Mandela’s role in ending apartheid? A1: Mandela played a pivotal role in dismantling apartheid through peaceful negotiations, paving the way for a democratic South Africa.

Q2: How did Mandela promote reconciliation? A2: Mandela emphasized forgiveness and unity, fostering a climate of reconciliation to heal the wounds of apartheid.

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Nelson Mandela Essay

Nelson Mandela was a statesman and black nationalist leader in South Africa who was born on July 18, 1918, in Umtata, Cape of Good Hope. He passed away on December 5, 2013, in Johannesburg. Mandela, a law student at the University of Witwatersrand and the son of a Xhosa chief, joined the African National Congress(ANC) in 1944. Here are a few sample essays on Nelson Mandela.

100 Words Essay On Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was an outstanding leader of African nationalism and a professional lawyer born on July 18, 1918, in South Africa. He eventually gave up on that, and in 1944 joined the African National Congress. In South Africa, he spearheaded the nonviolent resistance against racial inequality.

He was one of South Africa's finest leaders and independence fighters. Mandela battled against the repressive regime alongside the revolutionaries. Nelson Mandela became the nation's first black president, ultimately leading to the overthrow of the white supremacist administration. He will always be seen as a symbol of social justice and equality. At age 95, he passed away on December 5th, 2013.

200 Words Essay On Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918. He was a native of a little South African community called Umtata. His entire life represents a struggle in South Africa against ingrained racism. He was one of those who were burdened by the impartial system. Thus it wasn't simple for him to fight against the current circumstances.

Nelson Mandela’s Contributions

Nelson Mandela lived through years of being a colonised person before becoming actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement. Mandela endured suffering as an African boy who fell victim to the European expatriate effort that involved 'civilising' local people. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in the 1960s for opposing the government's racial restrictions. He spent around three decades behind bars, yet he never wavered in his quest for justice and equality for all people.

Nelson Mandela was regarded as a man of strength, integrity, and ideals and a strong, unyielding leader. He was the only person to lead the country in 1994 in the fight to eradicate racial discrimination. In South Africa, he received the first-ever nomination for president of a race. Between 1994 and 1999, he presided over South Africa for five years.

Nelson Mandela symbolised the aspirations for a just and free world even after he left public life.

500 Words Essay On Nelson Mandela

Henry Mandela, the chief of the Tembu tribe, gave birth to Nelson Mandela in 1918. He married Evelyn Ntoko Mase, a nurse, in the year 1944. His twelve fruitful years of marriage ended in divorce. After two years, in 1958, he wed Nomzamo Winnie Madikileza, a political activist and social worker. In 1998, after divorcing her, he married Graca Machel, a lawyer. He had two daughters from his second marriage and three kids from his first marriage.

Nelson Mandela’s Academics

Speaking of his schooling, Nelson Mandela completed his bachelor's degree through distance learning at South Africa University in 1941. He earned a law degree from Witwatersrand University in 1942. He began working as a lawyer in South Africa in 1948.

Nelson Mandela’s Life As A Prisoner

He experienced repeated police harassment between the 1940s and the 1950s, including harassment, banishment, and detention. In 1960, he formed a military wing and went into hiding. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for five years in 1962 due to his illegal international travel. This act angered South Africans, and a strike was called. He was held for two years before being accused of disloyalty, which resulted in a life sentence for him.

His 4-and-a-half-hour lecture, which criticised racial prejudice, is still remembered today. Mandela served nearly 27 years of a life sentence in prison. His detention improved his political standing, which sparked a global effort to have his sentence commuted.

Mandela spent all of these twenty-seven years behind bars. He was kept out of sight and concealed from everyone as he dug limestone and grew seaweed. Nelson Mandela was hospitalised for TB in 1988. After he had healed, he was sent back to prison under less stringent circumstances. He was fully discharged in 1990, allowing him to watch happy celebration scenes at home and abroad.

His Life As A Politician

Mandela's involvement in politics began after he enrolled in college. He worked hard to earn a Bachelor of "Fine Arts" degree. He received a nomination from a student political organisation to serve on the Representative Council while he was a student. He was following his debarment due to his participation in a campus protest. As a result, he travelled to Johannesburg to complete his BA. When World War II broke out, Nelson Mandela joined forces with the ANC's "African National Congress" after receiving his degree in 1942.

Together with the other ANC members, Nelson Mandela formed a group. This group's main goal was to make the ANC a widespread movement. Mandela was a key figure in several racial activities and political campaigns that relied on nonviolent tactics, including strikes, boycotts, and acts of civil disobedience.

He passed away in December 2013. At the time, he was 95 years old. Nelson Mandela received more than 250 honours and distinctions, including the Medal of Freedom, the Bharat Ratna, and the "1993 Nobel Peace" Prize.

He was a great inspiration for me. I used to study the biography of the legend Nelson Mandela. He is known for saying, "A Winner is a Dreamer who Never Gives Up."

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

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Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or  MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.  

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process. 

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Nelson Mandela obituary

One must go back to Dallas, Texas, in 1963 to find a comparable occasion of collective bereavement as that which has met the death of Nelson Mandela , at the age of 95. Even the assassination of President John F Kennedy registered less resonantly in the days before the global village – and, in any case, the trajectory of the American politician's life represented promise shattered rather than hope fulfilled.

Mandela has surely been venerated by more millions in his lifetime than any political figure in history. In working to free his country from racial division, he led an essentially peaceful revolution, culminating in his release from prison in 1990 and the post-apartheid election of 1994, which saw him elected as the first president of a democratic South Africa . The world responded to the qualities it perceived in the man, as well as to the scale of his achievement.

Was he born to it, this child of royal descent? His uncompromising defiance of a cruelly repressive government – as commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the Spear of the Nation – spoke loud. Was he a great general, or a great politician, this herdsboy who became a president and more? Was he a great orator? He did, after all, in his statement from the dock in the Rivonia trial make one of the most memorable speeches in the annals of political struggle. Or was his statesmanship what mattered, bringing peace to a nation that seemed destined for bloody racial war? Curiously, Mandela's greatness seems to have lain in all these things, and yet in none of them.

His birth, into the royal house of the Thembu people, was central to the man. But as royalty goes, his place in Xhosa tribal society was barely of the high-born. His father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a descendant of a 19th-century tribal monarch, Ngubengcuka, but through the so-called "left-hand house", which did not stand in the direct line of succession. His mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of four wives, and Rolihlahla – "pulling the branch of a tree" or, more colloquially, "troublemaker" – was the youngest of his father's four sons. "Apart from life, a strong constitution and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name," Mandela recalled in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom (1994).

And African tribal monarchy was not European in form. "We slept on mats, without pillows, resting our heads on our elbows," recalled one of Mandela's nine sisters, Nobandhla, in Fatima Meer's biography Higher Than Hope. "Our mother's stove was a hole in the ground over which she put a grate." As a child, Mandela was forced to wear his father's hand-me-downs, cutting a comic figure in adult trousers amputated at the knees and belted with a piece of string.

A child's world is bounded by what they see. When Mandela was born at Mvezo, near Umtata, 120 miles north-east of East London, in the native reserve of the Transkei in the Eastern Cape, he was an aristocrat in his small world, even if his first duty, aged five, after the family moved to nearby Qunu, was as a shepherd. At the age of seven, he went to school, the first of his family to do so. On that first day he was given the name of Nelson to answer to; each child had to have an English as well as an indigenous name; whether his teacher had the British naval hero in mind in his case, he never knew.

He was nine when his father died of a lung disease. According to Nelson's sister, Mabel, he made a dying bequest to the Thembu regent, David Dalindyebo, giving Nelson into his care. "I can see from the way he speaks to his sisters and friends that his inclination is to help the nation," Mabel quoted her father as telling the regent.

The bequest took Nelson to the Thembu capital, Mqhekezweni, the "great place", where he became part of the royal family, being treated by Dalindyebo and his wife as their own child. "As a leader, I have always followed the principles I first saw demonstrated by the regent at the 'great place'," Mandela recalled. "I have always endeavoured to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Often times, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion."

Courage was also a prerequisite of tribal manhood. In his autobiography, Mandela recounted, with pained humour, the story of his circumcision – an ordeal that took place when he was 16. The ingcici , the man making the cut, used an assegai (fighting spear) for the operation. The 26 boys sharing the rite of passage sat naked on their blankets, legs splayed in front of them. According to Xhosa tradition, when the blow was delivered, the victim would shout Ndiyindoda (I am a man!). "I was tense and anxious, uncertain of how I would react when the crucial moment came," Mandela recalled. To flinch, or cry out, would have been a sign of weakness. "I was determined not to disgrace myself, the group or my guardian. Circumcision is a trial of bravery and stoicism; no anaesthetic is used; a man must suffer in silence."

The moment arrived, the old man kneeling in front of him, face pale and shining with the perspiration of a shared tension. "Without a word he took my foreskin, pulled it forward and then, in a single motion, brought down his assegai . I felt as if fire was shooting through my veins. The pain was so intense that I buried my chin in my chest. Many seconds seemed to pass before I remembered the cry and then I recovered and called out: ' Ndiyindoda '.

"I looked down and saw a perfect cut, clean and round like a ring. But I felt ashamed because the other boys seemed much stronger and firmer than I had been ... I felt distressed that I had been disabled, however briefly, by the pain, and I did my best to hide my agony. A boy may cry. A man hides his pain." Hiding his agony was to become a way of life for Mandela.

In the family tradition, he was groomed to become a counsellor to the future king, Sabata. He was sent to a Methodist mission school, Clarkebury, 25 miles south-west of Umtata. The governor, the Rev Cecil Harris, was the first white man he shook hands with. His first day in class was also the first time he wore shoes. At 19, he moved to another Methodist school, Healdtown, in Fort Beaufort, 175 miles south-west of Umtata, and then to nearby Fort Hare University College, at the time South Africa's only black university, where he developed a close friendship with Kaiser Matanzima. Ironically, Matanzima was later to be excoriated by the world's anti-apartheid community as a "bantustan" leader – prime minister of the Transkei homeland.

Mandela greatly enjoyed university, particularly boxing and athletics, and, on the strength of his first-year studies in English, anthropology, politics, native administration and Roman-Dutch law, nursed an ambition to become a civil servant and interpreter – about as high a position as a black man might aspire to in those days. But his ambition seemed to be crushed when, in 1940, in his second year, as a member of the student representative council he was expelled for his part in a rebellion over poor quality food. He returned to Mqhekezweni to find another potential disaster – an arranged marriage was being planned for him.

To escape the nuptials, in 1941 he ran away to Johannesburg, where he landed a job as a night watchman guarding the compound entrance of a goldmine. Equipped with a whistle, a flashlight and a club, he had to stand next to a sign warning "Beware. Natives crossing here", and check the identity of everyone passing.

By this time Mandela had abandoned his dream of becoming an interpreter in favour of a career in the law. A cousin introduced him to the future ANC leader Walter Sisulu, then running an estate agency in central Johannesburg. Sisulu took him to a local law firm, Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, with whom he did business, and they agreed to take him on as a clerk while he completed a University of South Africa BA by correspondence. "It was a Jewish firm, and in my experience I have found Jews to be more broadminded than most whites on issues of race and politics, perhaps because they themselves have historically been victims of prejudice," Mandela observed.

At the office and at Sisulu's home, he began mixing with more radical members of black society. He also met his first wife, Evelyn Mase, a cousin of Sisulu. She was a trainee nurse from the Transkei, four years younger than her future husband. They married in 1944 and had two sons and two daughters, both called Makaziwe, since the first died in infancy. The marriage broke up in 1956 after Evelyn, a Jehovah's Witness, reputedly demanded that Mandela choose between her and the ANC, and divorce followed in 1958. She died in 2004, and of their four children only Makaziwe survives.

Mandela was always unable to pin-point when he first became politicised, though his circle of white and radical friends widened after he started a part-time law degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1943. His first appearance on the political stage came in 1944, with the launch of the ANC Youth League, a ginger group determined to radicalise, or replace, the staid leadership of the ANC. Mandela was a founder executive member.

Then, in 1948, the exclusively Afrikaner Nationalist party won the whites-only general election, and began to institute its policy of apartheid across South Africa. In response, the ANC started looking for alliances with communist and Asian groups to organise civil disobedience campaigns. By then, thanks in large part to the youth league, the ANC had been rejuvenated. Chief Albert Luthuli was president, Mandela his deputy. A measure of his new prominence was that he got his first banning order.

In August of that year, Mandela, having abandoned his LLB but now qualified as an attorney, set up a law partnership with the man who would stand in for him during the long years of imprisonment, Oliver Tambo. The firm of Mandela and Tambo was South Africa's only partnership of black lawyers, so its services were greatly in demand. But while the two attorneys used their legal know-how to promote their political ends, the failure of conventional campaigning to stop the removal of the black population of the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown in February 1955 convinced Mandela that the ANC had no alternative but to take up armed resistance: "A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire." The political objectives of this new urgency were defined in the Freedom Charter, drawn up over two days in June 1955 by an ANC-led rainbow alliance known as the Congress of the People.

The government, however, pre-empted further action when, in December 1956, it arrested Mandela and 155 other activists for high treason, on the grounds that the charter implied communist revolution. During the two weeks before her husband was released on bail, Evelyn and the children moved out of the family home – Mandela was most shocked by the fact that she even took the curtains. The state found difficulty making its case, and it took until January 1958 before the magistrate committed 95 of the defendants for trial at the Transvaal supreme court.

While the hearing had a disastrous effect on his law firm, Mandela had the consolation during it of meeting Nomzamo Winifred "Winnie" Madikizela. They got married in June 1958, and in August he was back in court. The prosecution was struggling to demonstrate violent intent and the trial was still dragging on when, on 26 March 1960, 69 Africans demonstrating against the pass laws were shot dead by the police in Sharpeville, 35 miles south of Johannesburg. By the time the trial ended a year later, with the remaining 29 defendants acquitted, it had become a platform for the declaration of ANC ideals.

By then, Tambo had left South Africa to start an external wing of the ANC, and the country was on the point of leaving the Commonwealth, which was no longer willing to tolerate apartheid. Straight after the verdict, Mandela went underground, earning himself a reputation as the "black pimpernel" as he stayed one step ahead of the authorities. In June 1961, he persuaded the ANC leadership to pursue a course of violence, with himself as the head of MK, and immediately recruited Sisulu and the white communist Joe Slovo to lead a force whose cutting edge was a small group of explosives experts.

Part of Mandela's time was spent on a farm at Liliesleaf, in Rivonia, a suburb north of Johannesburg. Winnie brought him an old air rifle for target practice. One day, he shot a sparrow with it and was mortified when the five-year-old son of a friend rounded on him, saying: "Why did you kill that bird? Its mother will be sad." "My mood immediately shifted from one of pride to shame," Mandela recalled. "I felt that this small boy had far more humanity than I did. It was an odd sensation for a man who was the leader of a nascent guerrilla army."

Reluctant to cause loss of life, MK first made its presence felt through explosions at government installations in December 1961. In the new year, Mandela got his first taste of the world outside South Africa, when he went on a whirlwind tour of the continent, visiting Tanzania, Algeria, Ethiopa, Ghana Morocco, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali and Egypt. He also spent 10 days in London.

Returning home, he was finally captured in August 1962, masquerading as a chauffeur. Speculation as to how the police found him included claims that the CIA tipped them off. But there was an amateurish quality to the ANC's operations at the time, and so several possible explanations as to how he was betrayed. He was sentenced to three years for incitement, and another two years for leaving the country without a passport. Then, in October 1963, he was brought to court again as the "number one accused" in the Rivonia trial, alongside those ANC leaders arrested at the farm that July, and charged with sabotage.

Looking back, it seems inconceivable that those accused of treason at Rivonia could have been hanged, but such an outcome was entirely plausible. A member of the Johannesburg bench privately claims that he saved them by persuading the trial judge, Quartus De Wet, to change his mind over a cup of tea in the judicial common room, just before he returned to court for sentencing. De Wet, it seems, had been set on hanging.

Many years later, in 1995, Mandela – delivering the first annual lecture in memory of the Communist party leader Bram Fischer, who was his defence counsel at Rivonia – drew roars of laughter by recalling his dismay when he sought comfort from a friendly warder on the eve of sentencing. Hoping to be contradicted, he told the man he assumed it would be death – but the jailor just looked thoughtful and agreed. "I ran and ran and ran [in the exercise yard] that day," he recalled.

Despite this inner agitation, his determination to show dignity in the face of the gallows almost invited the attentions of the hangman. The draft of his now famous defence statement was returned to him by apprehensive lawyers. They begged him to excise the last paragraph, arguing that it was likely to antagonise the judge. But he refused.

The reading of the statement took four hours. It denied foreign influence or recklessness in settling on a programme of sabotage, and emphasised the ANC's desire for a non-racial democracy. Mandela spoke the last paragraph from memory, looking straight at De Wet: "During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. 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."

His handwritten notes to counsel, returned to him after his release from jail 26 years later, show he was preparing a speech in answer to the death sentence, in which he planned to say: "If I must die, let me declare for all to know that I will meet my fate like a man." Instead, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

At the time, Mandela and the ANC believed that the liberation of black South Africa could be expected within a few years – the winds of change were already blowing through the continent. Few anticipated just how long life imprisonment would be for Mandela, and the stoicism that would be demanded of him. His life was to have many gut-wrenching moments, when the fortitude of his response to mental agony would have given pride to his tribal elders. Perhaps the worst pain was emotional, the wounds caused by separation from his family and the accompanying blows, such as the loss of his eldest son, Madiba "Thembi" Thembekile, in a car crash in 1969.

Already suffering guilt about the boy – "I shall look after the family while you are gone," were the farewell words of the child when his father went underground – Mandela received the news of Thembi's death by telegram after five years on Robben Island. "I returned to my cell and lay on my bed. I do not know how long I stayed there ... Finally Walter [Sisulu] came to me and knelt beside my bed, and I handed him the telegram. He said nothing, but only held my hand. I do not know how long he remained with me. There is nothing one man can say to another at such a time."

Then there was Winnie. The story of her peccadilloes is well known – her love affairs and her part in a variety of suspected crimes, including the murder of the 14-year-old township activist Stompie Moeketsi Seipei in 1989. Mandela's private agony is difficult to encompass, though his vulnerability is apparent in his prison letters.

At first, he was allowed to write only two letters a year, building up to two a month by 1981. They were subject, of course, to the prison censor, but the agony over Winnie, and the passion of which that agony was a product, blazes through them. "At my age, I would have expected all the urges of youth to have faded away. But it does not appear to be so," he wrote to her in 1979, after 15 years on the island. "The mere sight of you, even the thought about you, kindles a thousand fires in me." The battle with his emotions appeared never-ending. "I have been fairly successful in putting on a mask behind which I have pined for the family alone, never rushing for the post when it comes until someone calls out my name," he told her three years earlier. "I also never linger after visits, although sometimes the urge to do so becomes quite terrible. I am struggling to suppress my emotions as I write this letter."

Released on 11 February 1990, the following year he was still struggling to keep the mask on – hands dug into a trenchcoat in the public gallery of the Rand supreme court, staring impassively as his wife was pilloried on kidnapping and assault charges relating to Stompie's death. A six-year jail sentence was reduced on appeal to a fine. It was not until his appearance before the same court – for his divorce in 1996 – that it became apparent that the reservoirs of love had finally run out. They had separated in 1992, and her appointment in 1994 as deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology in his government had ended in her dismissal within a year, amid allegations of corruption.

With Winnie, Mandela had two daughters, Zenani ("Zeni") and Zindziswa ("Zindzi"), who survive him, and fortunately all was not lost in his personal life. Soon after the divorce, he was travelling in the company of Graça Machel, widow of the Mozambican president and ANC ally Samora Machel, who had died in an air crash 15 years earlier. Marriage followed in 1998, on Mandela's 80th birthday. Graça, too, survives him, as do 17 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.

However, though Mandela finally found private contentment, the mask had become integral to the persona, and not only where Winnie and his family were concerned. An American journalist, Richard Stengel, the ghostwriter of Long Walk to Freedom, recounted an intriguing anecdote about the time he spent travelling the country before the president-in-waiting came to power in the elections of 26-29 April 1994.

It happened at his country house in the Transkei in April 1993, when Mandela was called to the garden to meet the local police rugby team. He was busy shaking hands when his housekeeper ran out, weeping, to say there was an urgent telephone call. Excusing himself, he went inside, returning after several minutes to resume his greetings to the players. It was only later that his aides discovered the call had informed him that his close friend Chris Hani, the powerful and popular Communist party leader, had been assassinated by a white fanatic. It was the closest South Africa came to race war, and a grievous personal blow. But Mandela went on shaking hands and smiling.

In prison, stoicism was the only way to survive with his sanity intact. Even when pressure from the outside world – most notably from US corporations withdrawing investment – compelled the Nationalist party government to look to a new settlement, progress was painfully slow. In 1985, President PW Botha offered freedom if Mandela "unconditionally rejected violence as a political instrument". He refused this, the sixth conditional offer of release in 10 years. But companies continued to leave, and in a meeting with Botha shortly before he was succeeded by FW de Klerk in August 1989, Mandela sensed a change of attitude.

Four years later, he acknowledged De Klerk's courage in admitting that "a terrible wrong had been done to our country and people through the imposition of the system of apartheid" in his acceptance speech for their shared Nobel peace prize.

After Mandela's release, his stoicism proved a boon. South Africa – its black population, in particular – desperately needed a figure of dignity to represent them. Has there ever been a figure of greater dignity than the tall, slim, stony-faced figure of Madiba (the clan name by which he was often addressed), surrounded by the white generals who had fought so hard to destroy his cause, taking the salute at the presidential inauguration in May 1994?

At times, there were suspicions that the mask was all there was to Mandela; that had his grasp of the situation been quite limited, it would have made no difference to his reputation for sagacity, such was the mystique surrounding him. There may be some grounds for this scepticism. His incarceration was, in a way, a blessing for his political reputation. He was plucked from the political arena after making a resounding, if obvious, statement of truth at the Rivonia trial, which was reiterated endlessly on his behalf during his imprisonment. A reputation for wisdom must accrue to a politician who has been consistently proven right for more than quarter of a century.

So what lay behind the mask? The record after his release suggests there was a certain naivety about Mandela, born of tutored ignorance, the product of imprisonment and deliberate isolation. His unforgettable walk through the gates of Victor Verster prison, 35 miles north-east of Cape Town, was, in a sense, a rebirth. Welcomed into an alien society, he looked about him with wide-eyed wonderment. (At one stage, he thought that a television sound-man waving a boom microphone at him was wielding a fancy assassination device.)

His sense of naive wonderment was there in his enthusiasm for Elizabeth Taylor – her image etched bright in his mind by seeing the film Cleopatra in a rare moment of official entertainment on Robben Island – and his enjoyment of the Miss World competitions staged in South Africa in the 1990s. Even his boyish welcome to the Queen at Cape Town docks in 1995 suggested a man long preserved in aspic – only such enthusiasm could account for him being one of the few men who could get away with calling her Elizabeth to her face.

It is worth remembering that when Mandela went to jail, Kennedy had yet to deal with the Cuban missile crisis and the Beatles were still to release their first hit. On the other hand, the enthusiasm of the inner child that survived from this earlier age could chime with that of the legion of South African sports fans – Afrikaners not least among them – as when the country hosted the 1995 rugby World Cup. Mandela wore captain François Pienaar's number six jersey for the final, went down on to the field, and the crowd loved it. A poignant echo of that moment came at the soccer World Cup final of 2010: while he still thrilled spectators by smiling and waving from a golf buggy, they knew that he had suffered the loss of his 13-year-old great-granddaughter Zenani Mandela in a car crash after a concert at the start of the month-long event.

Sometimes Mandela was like a stage magician, forced to perform by his followers' passionate belief that he was the real thing. At times, the magic did not work, as at the King's Park stadium, Durban, shortly after his release from jail, when he appealed to his audience – protagonists in the KwaZulu-Natal civil war – to throw their spears and guns into the sea. Woodenly going through the motions of rhetorical appeal, he lost the crowd, who knew, as he did, what was happening.

Perhaps this need to demonstrate charisma explained his attachment to the glamour of the very rich. For the boy in ragged trousers, who had to struggle right up to the time De Wet removed him from the world of financial responsibility, money was dazzling. Hence, once freed, he holidayed at the Irish businessman Sir Tony O'Reilly's Caribbean island and gave the go-ahead for his takeover of South Africa's biggest newspaper group, in anticipation of his "magic money" providing black empowerment in the media.

He allowed the casino king, Sol Kerzner, to host the wedding of his daughter Zinzi. He borrowed rich men's houses and flew around South Africa in their aircraft. In speeches, he often used to boast of his ability to milk wealthy businessmen for good causes. But, at times, there was suspicion as to how "good" – or, more specifically, how independent of his own interests – the causes were.

One person who seemingly had such concerns was the former opposition leader Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, who described in his memoir, The Other Side of History (2006), how Mandela had asked him for a large donation from the philanthropist George Soros for his African peace initiative.

"I pointed out to [Mandela] that he would have to be slightly more specific, otherwise Soros would not respond," recalled Slabbert. "He asked me to try in any case. When I contacted Soros, his reply was: 'I do not sign blank cheques.' I was in a difficult spot, but went to Mandela and as gently as possible suggested he gave content to his request, eg the travel, accommodation and salaries of two to three top executives ... I recall the smile freezing on Mandela's face, and his eyes going hard. That was the last time he talked to me about raising money. In fact, it was the last time he talked to me one-on-one in a personal, friendly manner."

In Mandela's later years, the fund-raising schemes he was seemingly inveigled into bordered on the tawdry – the attempts to market golden replicas of his hand; his emergence in 2003 as a talented painter, capable of dashing off entrancing views of Robben Island (with a little help from Vareenkas Paschkea, a 26-year-old art teacher and granddaughter of PW Botha); the twinning of his name with that of Cecil Rhodes, through the merging of the Rhodes Trust and the Nelson Mandela Foundation into the Mandela Rhodes Foundation in 2002.

His naivety in raising funds abroad came closest to betraying the high principles with which his name is associated. The friendship with Indonesia's President Sukarno seemingly originated in large donations to ANC funds; the millions slipped to the liberation movement by Taiwan were linked to holding out on the two-Chinas issue. The policy of constructive engagement with the Nigerian military junta – which possibly contributed to the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight comrades – was not unconnected with gifts to the ANC.

In the 1980s, it emerged that the Mandela name was the subject of a deal that Winnie was negotiating with an American businessman, Robert Brown, in order to exploit it commercially as a trademark. Her move was widely criticised as evidence of personal greed.

But Nelson, too, sought such a deal. From affidavits before the Johannesburg high court in the Mandela v Ayob case in 2007, involving allegations that the family lawyer, Ismael Ayob, had pocketed some of Mandela's money, it emerged that after what was known as the Tinancier agreement had been signed by Mandela, transferring a wide range of copyrights to a company owned by Ayob, he registered eight variations of his name as trademarks. Subsequently, he was in the process of closing a deal with an Afrikaner businessman, Douw Steyn, by which Steyn would have been able to exploit the Mandela name in the marketing of a game farm. The ANC leader would have received 20% of the profits.

When this deal collapsed for legal reasons, Mandela approached a group of wealthy businessmen for donations to support him and his family. A trust fund was set up, and between September 16 2002 and March 10 2005, it received 18.5m rand (about £1.7m). There does not appear to be a charitable dimension to this fund outside the Mandela family.

Nonetheless, Mandela considered himself a man of the world. He display- ed no signs of personal avarice; he cut his presidential salary when he came to power, and lopped off a further third of it as a regular donation to a children's fund. Prison, one sensed, had imbued him with an understanding of the irrelevance of personal possessions. His fundraising activities were always for the sake of others, pre-eminently for his people and the ANC, to which he gave intense loyalty as the vehicle of liberation. It was a cause important enough to justify compromises, but the sense of principle, the attachment to ideals – if not precisely the honouring of them – was always there.

Mandela was a flawed man, as all men are flawed, and in the face of this one struggles to discover the roots of his greatness. He was certainly courageous, though he arguably failed his family, in more ways than one – by his first wife's account, he even tried to throttle her on one occasion. One of his sons never visited him in prison and the other rarely wrote, both seemingly feeling a sense of betrayal. And then, of course, there was Winnie, for whom he carried some burden of guilt, even if he was the one who divorced her.

There was, too, Winnie's advocacy of "necklacing" – execution by burning, with tyres around the victim's neck – which was hugely damaging to South Africa's liberation struggle. It was used primarily against alleged informers and public functionaries seen as collaborators, but other victims included people held guilty of minor infractions of community solidarity, such as breaches of a consumer boycott, and old women held to be witches.

South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission has estimated that more than 400 people were killed by necklacing. In its final report, it observed that "although the official policy of both the UDF [the broadly-based United Democratic Front] and the ANC was to condemn necklacing, the public statements of the leadership of these organisations were sometimes ambiguous and appeared to give tacit, and sometimes overt, approval to the practice."

It has been long assumed that Mandela, in prison, would have strongly condemned necklacing. Indeed, it was reported, and widely believed, that after Winnie had raised the issue – in 1986, when she declared that South Africans would liberate themselves with matchboxes and tyres – her husband had summoned her to Pollsmoor prison, in Cape Town and reprimanded her for it. It has emerged, however, from a document that circulated among journalists and academics in South Africa, and which finally dribbled into print in 2005, that Mandela condoned his wife's statement. The document, the minutes of a meeting between Mandela, Winnie and Ayob inside Pollsmoor prison, said: "NM approved of WM's necklace speech. He said that it was a good thing as there has not been one black person who has attacked WM."

It transpired that the document had been found by the renowned South African editor Anthony Sampson, while he was working on Mandela's authorised biography. Sampson has since died, but his chief researcher, James Sanders, said there had been a row over whether the document should be published, with threats from the Mandela camp to withdraw co-operation if he used it. Eventually, Sampson pulled the document.

As a speaker, Mandela was no Churchill. Other than the Rivonia defence, few of his utterances will stand the test of time. His command of MK was brief, and notable for little more than the arrest of the high command, including himself. The incompetence of the ANC government in South Africa under his leadership – while understandable in the light of ministerial inexperience and the sabotage of their efforts by the old guard civil service – offered little testament to his administrative abilities. Arguably the single most significant contribution he made to the governance of South Africa during his presidency was his decision to stand down in 1999 after one five-year term, a gesture intended to discourage his successors from extending their time in office beyond the limits allowed by the constitution.

One suspects that this move came as something of a relief to the ANC leadership, who spent much of their time assuring the media that Mandela's presidential policy announcements – such as his intention to extend the franchise to 14-year-olds – were not to be taken seriously. Mandela himself conceded in retirement that his government should have paid greater attention to the HIV/Aids epidemic. When his son Makgotho died from the disease in 2005, Mandela announced the fact openly, and called for the fight against it to be redoubled.

It was also an open secret that Thabo Mbeki was running the government from behind the throne, buoyed up by the international goodwill attracted by Mandela. Mandela's presidency was spent doing little more than playing host to the celebrities and politicians who flooded into the country to shake the great man's hand. One suspects that he seized on the suggestion that he stand down after a single term with relief at the prospect of escaping a job that was little more than a burden.

Mankind has become used to discovering its heroes have feet of clay, and in Mandela's case, much can be explained away by the single fact of his incarceration. How could anyone, cut off from the rest of humanity for more that a quarter of a century, be anything but unworldly, particularly in the handling of money? And it should be remembered that the necklacing remark was made in emotional circumstances, in the context of a prison visit by a woman with whom he was then desperately in love. At the same time, it does raise questions about the judgment of a man the world has come to know as a political saint.

So why use the word great? Perhaps it was Mandela's appreciation of politics as theatre, combined with his talent as the great conciliator. Many will have their own stories of the "Madiba magic" at work. For this writer, it was a small episode that took place on the steps of the civic centre, under a fluttering flag of the Boer republic, in a dusty village in the middle of the giant scrubland known as the Karoo. The date was 15 August 1995.

The place was Orania, Northern Cape, the last refuge of the Afrikaner fundamentalists who fled the approach of modernity with the great trek of 1835-42. The occasion was a tea party. Mandela was the guest, the host was Betsy Verwoerd, the 94-year-old widow of the notorious President Hendrik Verwoerd, whose killing in 1966 had brought no pleasure to his opponents imprisoned on Robben Island – in Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela asserted that neither he nor the ANC had ever supported political assassination. One moment of that extraordinary meeting stands out for me, overwhelming all the other extraordinary events of post-apartheid South Africa.

It came as Betsy, bereft of her glasses, struggled to read a statement to reporters gathered on the steps of the community hall. Mandela, sotto voce , prompted her in Afrikaans, reading over her shoulder. Once finished, she smiled her thanks up at the black man towering over her. He smiled fondly back.

To appreciate that moment, one needs a particular understanding of the South African story. To the world, South Africa has long been literally a black-and-white issue, the goodies and baddies easily identifiable by the colour of their skin. But that was always an over-simplification, qualified from the early days of the anti-apartheid struggle by the likes of Fischer, the Rev Beyers Naudé and Slovo, and compromised more recently by the reform movement under De Klerk, who saw the necessity of letting Mandela take the country forward in the election of 1994.

Another way of understanding South Africa is to recognise it as something of an Old Testament story, a tale of people struggling to do right by their gods and failing time and time again. In the second half of the 20th century, these people, exhausted by the struggle with themselves and against one another, had need of a unifying figure to give them a vision of nationhood.

Mandela saw the need, donned the mask that the role demanded and gave his life for his people. There lies his greatness, and hence the tears that flow at his death, in a much beloved country.

• Nelson Mandela
• South Africa

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