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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Xhosa pronunciation: [xo?li??a?a man?de?la]; born

18 July 1918) is a South African politician who served as President of South

Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first ever to be elected in a fully representative

democratic election. Before being elected President, Mandela was a militant

anti-apartheid activist, and the leader and co-founder of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the

armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1962 he was arrested and

convicted of sabotage and other charges, and sentenced to life. Mandela went on

to serve 27 years in prison, spending many of these years on Robben Island.

Following his release from prison on 11 February 1990, Mandela led his party in

the negotiations that led to the establishment of democracy in 1994. As

President, he frequently gave priority to reconciliation, while introducing

policies aimed at combating poverty and inequality in South Africa.

In South Africa, Mandela is often known as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name; or as

tata (Xhosa: father). Mandela has received more than 250 awards over four

decades.

Early life

Nelson Mandela belongs to a cadet branch of the Thembu dynasty, which reigns

in the Transkei region of South Africa's Eastern Cape Province. He was born in

Mvezo, a small village located in the district of Umtata. He has Khoisan

ancestry on his mother's side. His patrilineal great-grandfather Ngubengcuka

(who died in 1832), ruled as the Inkosi Enkhulu, or king, of the Thembu people.

One of the king's sons, named Mandela, became Nelson's grandfather and the

source of his surname. However, because he was only the Inkosi's child by a wife

of the Ixhiba clan (the so-called "Left-Hand House"), the descendants of his

branch of the royal family were not eligible to succeed to the Thembu

throne.

Nelson Mandela circa 1937

Political activity

After the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party,

which supported the apartheid policy of racial segregation, Mandela began

actively participating in politics. He led prominently in the ANC's 1952

Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People, whose adoption of the

Freedom Charter provided the fundamental basis of the anti-apartheid cause.

During this time, Mandela and fellow lawyer Oliver Tambo operated the law firm

of Mandela and Tambo, providing free or low-cost legal counsel to many blacks

who lacked attorney representation.

Mahatma Gandhi influenced Mandela's approach, and subsequently the methods of

succeeding generations of South African anti-apartheid activists. (Mandela later

took part in the 29–30 January 2007 conference in New Delhi marking the 100th

anniversary of Gandhi's introduction of satyagraha (non-violent resistance) in

South Africa).

Armed anti-apartheid activities

In 1961 Mandela became leader of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe

(translated Spear of the Nation, and also abbreviated MK), which he co-founded.

He coordinated sabotage campaigns against military and government targets,

making plans for a possible guerrilla war if the sabotage failed to end

apartheid. Mandela also raised funds for MK abroad and arranged for paramilitary

training of the group.

Fellow ANC member Wolfie Kodesh explains the bombing campaign led by Mandela:

"When we knew that we [sic] going to start on 16 December 1961, to blast the

symbolic places of apartheid, like pass offices, native magistrates courts, and

things like that ... post offices and ... the government offices. But we were to

do it in such a way that nobody would be hurt, nobody would get killed." Mandela

said of Wolfie: "His knowledge of warfare and his first hand battle experience

were extremely helpful to me."

Later, mostly in the 1980s, MK, the organisation co-founded by Mandela, waged

a guerrilla war against the apartheid government in which many civilians became

casualties.. For example, the Church Street bomb in Pretoria killed 19 people

and injured 217. After he had become President, Mandela later admitted that the

ANC, in its struggle against apartheid, also violated human rights, criticising

those in his own party who attempted to remove statements mentioning this from

the reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Until July 2008 Mandela and ANC party members were barred from entering the

United States—except to visit the United Nations headquarters in

Manhattan—without a special waiver from the US Secretary of State, because of

their South African apartheid government era designation as terrorists.

Arrest and Rivonia trial

On 5 August 1962 Mandela was arrested after living on the run for seventeen

months, and was imprisoned in the Johannesburg Fort. The arrest was made

possible because the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) allegedly tipped off

the security police as to Mandela's whereabouts and disguise. Three days later,

the charges of leading workers to strike in 1961 and leaving the country

illegally were read to him during a court appearance. On 25 October 1962,

Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison.

While Mandela was imprisoned, police arrested prominent ANC leaders on 11

July 1963, at Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, north of Johannesburg. Mandela was

brought in, and at the Rivonia Trial they were charged by the chief prosecutor

Dr. Percy Yutar with four charges of the capital crimes of sabotage (which

Mandela admitted) and crimes which were equivalent to treason, but easier for

the government to prove. They were also charged with plotting a foreign invasion

of South Africa, which Mandela denied. The specifics of the charges to which

Mandela admitted complicity involved conspiring with the African National

Congress and South African Communist Party to the use of explosives to destroy

water, electrical, and gas utilities in the Republic of South Africa.

Imprisonment

Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island where he remained for the next

eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison. While in jail, his reputation grew

and he became widely known as the most significant black leader in South Africa.

On the island, he and others performed hard labour in a lime quarry. Prison

conditions were very basic. Prisoners were segregated by race, with black

prisoners receiving the fewest rations. Political prisoners were kept separate

from ordinary criminals and received fewer privileges. Mandela describes how, as

a D-group prisoner (the lowest classification) he was allowed one visitor and

one letter every six months Letters, when they came, were often delayed for long

periods and made unreadable by the prison censors.

On the day of his release, Mandela said his main focus was to bring peace to

the black majority and give them the right to vote in both national and local

elections.

Negotiations

Following his release from prison, Mandela returned to the leadership of the

ANC and, between 1990 and 1994, led the party in the multi-party negotiations

that led to the country's first multi-racial elections.

Presidency of South Africa

South Africa's first multi-racial elections in which full enfranchisement was

granted were held on 27 April 1994. The ANC won 62% of the votes in the

election, and Mandela, as leader of the ANC, was inaugurated on 10 May 1994 as

the country's first black President, with the National Party's de Klerk as his

first deputy and Thabo Mbeki as the second in the Government of National Unity.

As President from May 1994 until June 1999, Mandela presided over the transition

from minority rule and apartheid, winning international respect for his advocacy

of national and international reconciliation. Mandela encouraged black South

Africans to get behind the previously hated Springboks (the South African

national rugby team) as South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. After the

Springboks won an epic final over New Zealand, Mandela presented the trophy to

captain Francois Pienaar, an Afrikaner, wearing a Springbok shirt with Pienaar's

own number 6 on the back. This was widely seen as a major step in the

reconciliation of white and black South Africans.

After assuming the presidency, one of Mandela's trademarks was his use of

Batik shirts, known as "Madiba shirts", even on formal occasions. In South

Africa's first post-apartheid military operation, Mandela ordered troops into

Lesotho in September 1998 to protect the government of Prime Minister Pakalitha

Mosisili. This came after a disputed election prompted fierce opposition

threatening the unstable government. Commentators and critics including AIDS

activists such as Edwin Cameron have criticised Mandela for his government's

ineffectiveness in stemming the AIDS crisis. After his retirement, Mandela

admitted that he may have failed his country by not paying more attention to the

HIV/AIDS epidemic. Mandela has since spoken out on several occasions about the

AIDS epidemic.

Retirement

Mandela became the oldest elected President of South Africa when he took

office at the age of 75 in 1994. He decided not to stand for a second term and

retired in 1999, to be succeeded by Thabo Mbeki.

After his retirement as President, Mandela went on to become an advocate for

a variety of social and human rights organisations. He has expressed his support

for the international Make Poverty History movement of which the ONE Campaign is

a part. The Nelson Mandela Invitational charity golf tournament, hosted by Gary

Player, has raised over twenty million rand for children's charities since its

inception in 2000. This annual special event has become South Africa's most

successful charitable sports gathering and benefits both the Nelson Mandela

Children's Fund and Gary Player Foundation equally for various children's causes

around the world.

Acclaim

Eve Fairbanks of Newsweek said "Mandela rightly occupies an untouched place

in the South African imagination. He's the national liberator, the saviour, its

Washington and Lincoln rolled into one".

In November 2009, the United Nations General Assembly announced that

Mandela's birthday, 18 July, is to be known as "Mandela Day" to mark his

contribution to world freedom.

Orders and decorations

Mandela has received many South African, foreign and international honours,

including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 (which was shared with Frederik Willem

de Klerk),[192] the Order of Merit from, and creation as, a Baliff Grand Cross

of the Order of St. John by Queen Elizabeth II and the Presidential Medal of

Freedom from George W. Bush. In July 2004, the city of Johannesburg bestowed its

highest honour on Mandela by granting him the freedom of the city at a ceremony

in Orlando, Soweto.

As an example of his popular foreign acclaim, during his tour of Canada in

1998, 45,000 school children greeted him with adulation at a speaking engagement

in the SkyDome in the city of Toronto. In 2001, he was the first living person

to be made an honorary Canadian citizen (the only previous recipient, Raoul

Wallenberg, was awarded honorary citizenship posthumously). While in Canada, he

was also made an honorary Companion of the Order of Canada, one of the few

foreigners to receive the honour.

In 1990 he received the Bharat Ratna Award from the government of India and

also received the last ever Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. In 1992 he

was awarded the Atatürk Peace Award by Turkey. He refused the award citing human

rights violations committed by Turkey at the time, but later accepted the award

in 1999. In 1992 he received of Nishan-e-Pakistan, the highest civil service

award of Pakistan.