Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was a South African lawyer, guerrilla leader and statesman who spent twenty-seven years in prison and then negotiated the end of the system that had jailed him. Born in 1918 into the Thembu royal house of the Transkei, he qualified as a lawyer and in 1952 opened Johannesburg's first black law practice with Oliver Tambo, defending clients against pass laws and forced removals. He joined the African National Congress in 1943 and helped found its Youth League, pushing the organisation from petition to mass action. After police killed sixty-nine demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960 and the ANC was banned, Mandela concluded that non-violence had been met with force and co-founded the armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, directing sabotage against installations rather than people. He was arrested in 1962 and, at the Rivonia Trial in 1964, sentenced to life imprisonment. His statement from the dock — that he was prepared to die for the ideal of a democratic and free society — became the movement's defining text. He served eighteen of those years on Robben Island breaking limestone, and refused conditional release in 1985 because it required renouncing the armed struggle. Released in February 1990, he led the negotiations that produced universal suffrage, insisting on a settlement with the National Party rather than the victory his supporters wanted. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk and became South Africa's first black president in 1994, serving a single term to 1999. His government established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which traded amnesty for testimony and left many victims without redress. He was slow to confront the AIDS epidemic, a failure he later acknowledged. He died in 2013.
- Lived: 1918 CE – 2013 CE
- Nationality: South African
- Roles: President of South Africa (1994-1999)
