South African statesman and president (1994-99). Born Rolihlahla Mandela on July 18, 1918 in Transkei, South Africa. Mandela's father had four wives and Mandela's mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third. He spent most of his childhood with his mother's family and was the first member to attend school. It was there that a Methodist teacher gave him the name Nelson, finding Rolihlahla too difficult to pronounce. Nelson's father died when he was nine, and the boy was adopted by the Regent Jongintaba and groomed to assume high office. As Thembu royalty, Nelson attended Wesleyan mission school, Clarkebury Boarding Institute and Wesleyan college. He studied at Fort Hare University but was asked to leave after boycotting against university policies.
Fleeing an arranged marriage, Mandela ran away to Johannesburg, where he worked a variety of jobs, including guard and clerk, while completing his bachelor's degree via correspondence. He then enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand to study law. He became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement and joined the African National Congress (ANC) 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, among others.
For 20 years, Mandela directed a campaign of peaceful, non-violent 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 to provide free and low-cost legal counsel to unrepresented blacks.
In 1956, Mandela and 150 others were arrested and charged with treason for their political advocacy, though they were eventually acquitted. Meanwhile, the ANC was being challenged by the Africanists, a new breed of Black activists who believed that the pacifist method of the ANC was ineffective. By 1959, the ANC lost much of its militant support when the Africanists broke away to form the Pan Africanist Congress.
In 1961, Mandela, who was formerly committed to non-violent protest, began to believe that armed struggle was the only way to achieve change. He co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, also known as MK, an armed offshoot of the ANC dedicated to sabotage and guerilla war tactics to end apartheid. He orchestrated a three-day national workers strike in 1961 for which he was arrested in 1962. He was sentenced to five years in prison for the strike, and then brought to trial again in 1963. This time, he and 10 other ANC leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment for political offenses, including sabotage. Read More..
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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 (Final)
