About Nelson Mandela
The following is reposted with permission from the Nelson Mandela Foundation:
Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in Mvezo,
Transkei, on July 18, 1918, to Nonqaphi Nosekeni and Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla
Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people,
Jongintaba Dalindyebo.
His father died when he was 12 years old (1930) and the
young Rolihlahla became a ward of Jongintaba at the Great Place in
Mqhekezweni.*
Hearing the elder’s stories of his ancestor’s valour during
the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the
freedom struggle of his people.
He attended primary school in Qunu where his teacher Miss
Mdingane gave him the name Nelson, in accordance with the custom to give all
school children “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.
Nelson 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.
He completed his BA through the University of South Africa
and went back to Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943.
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, who introduced him to Lazar Sidelsky. He then
did his articles through a firm of attorneys, Witkin Eidelman and Sidelsky.
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.
Nelson Mandela, while increasingly politically involved from
1942, only joined the African National Congress in 1944 when he helped to form
the ANC Youth League.
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. They
effectively separated in 1955 and divorced in 1958.
Nelson Mandela rose through the ranks of the ANCYL and
through its work, in 1949 the ANC adopted a more radical mass-based policy, the
Programme of Action.
In 1952 he was chosen at 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 hard labour, suspended for two years.
A two-year diploma in law on top of his BA allowed Nelson
Mandela to practice law, and in August 1952 he and Oliver Tambo established
South Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela and 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.
Nelson Mandela was arrested in a countrywide police swoop on
5 December 1955, 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 Mr Mandela were acquitted on 29 March 1961.
On 21 March 1960 police killed 69 unarmed people in a
protest against the pass laws held at Sharpeville. This led to the country’s
first state of emergency and the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist
Congress on 8 April. Nelson Mandela and his colleagues in the Treason Trial
were among thousands detained during the state of emergency.
During the trial on 14 June 1958 Nelson Mandela married a
social worker, Winnie Madikizela. They had two daughters, Zenani and Zindziswa.
The couple divorced in 1996.
Days before the end of the Treason Trial Nelson Mandela
travelled to Pietermaritzburg to speak at the All-in Africa Conference, which
resolved that he should write to Prime Minister Verwoerd requesting a
non-racial national convention, and to warn that should he not agree there
would be a national strike against South Africa becoming a republic. As soon as
he and his colleagues were acquitted in the Treason Trial Nelson 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).
On 11 January 1962, using the adopted name David Motsamayi,
Nelson 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 briefed ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli about
his trip.
He was charged with leaving the country illegally and
inciting workers to strike. He was convicted and sentenced to five years'
imprisonment which he began serving in 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 a secret hide-out in Rivonia used by ANC and
Communist Party activists, and several of his comrades were arrested.
On 9 October 1963 Nelson Mandela joined ten 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:
“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.”
On 11 June 1964 Nelson 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. Denis Goldberg was sent to Pretoria Prison
because he was white, while the others went to Robben Island.
Nelson Mandela’s mother died in 1968 and his eldest son
Thembi in 1969. He was not allowed to attend their funerals.
On 31 March 1982 Nelson 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
Nelson Mandela was held alone. Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee visited him in
hospital. Later Nelson Mandela initiated talks about an ultimate meeting
between the apartheid government and the ANC.
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.
Nelson 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.
On 10 May 1994 he was inaugurated South Africa’s first
democratically elected President. On his 80th birthday in 1998 he married Graça
Machel, his third wife.
True to his promise Nelson 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.
In April 2007 his grandson Mandla Mandela became head of the
Mvezo Traditional Council at a ceremony at the Mvezo Great Place.
Nelson Mandela never wavered in his devotion to democracy,
equality and learning. Despite terrible provocation, he never answered racism
with racism. His life has been an inspiration to all who are oppressed and
deprived; to all who are opposed to oppression and deprivation.
He died at his home in Johannesburg on December 5, 2013.
Source: “The Life & Times of Nelson Mandela,” Nelson Mandela Foundation
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