Nelson Mandela, born 18 July 1918, in Mvezo, South Africa, was a black nationalist and the first black president of South Africa from 1994–99. He died on 5 December 2013, in Johannesburg.
In the honour of his 90th birthday in 2008, he was honoured with several celebrations in South Africa, Great Britain, and other countries. Later in 2009, the United Nations declared 18 July to be observed annually as Nelson Mandela International Day in honour of his legacy – promoting community service around the world.
Lexicon World would like to introduce the readers to Nelson Mandela’s life and the objectives for which he renounced years of freedom, health, and dignity.
1. Mandela’s writings and speeches were collected in I Am Prepared to Die (1964; rev. ed. 1986), No Easy Walk to Freedom (1965; updated ed. 2002), The Struggle Is My Life (1978; rev. ed. 1990), and In His Own Words (2003).
” I Am Prepared to Die ” is the name given to the three-hour long speech given by Nelson Mandela, on 20 April 1964. Before he was sentenced for life, he made the famous “speech from the dock”.
An excerpt from “I am Prepared to Die” speech:
“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 people will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, My Lord, if it needs to be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”. Nelson Mandela
2. His negotiations in the early 1990s with South African President F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s apartheid system of racial discrimination and steered it towards a peaceful transition to majority rule. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts.
3. Nelson Mandela was the first in his family to attend school. As was the custom at that time, and probably due to the prejudice of the British educational system in South Africa, Mandela’s teacher told him that his new first name would be Nelson.
4. Mandela studied English, Xhosa, history and geography in school. It was around 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 oppression by 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”.
When Mandela was 16 he heard elders lament sadly for young generation.
“They are enslaved in their own country. Because their land was controlled by white men, they would never have the power to govern themselves”.
“The promise of the young men would be squandered as they struggled to make a living and perform mindless chores for white men”.
Mandela later shared that while the words of elders had not made much sense to him at the time, the words eventually formulated his resolve for an independent South Africa.
5. He attended South African Native College and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1944 he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black-liberation group, and became a leader of its Youth League.
Mandela established South Africa’s first black law practice, specializing in cases resulting from the post-1948 apartheid legislation. The law firm provided free and low-cost legal counsel to unrepresented Black people.
Mandela played an important role in launching a campaign of defiance against South Africa’s pass laws, which required non-whites to carry documents (known as passes, pass books, or reference books) authorizing their presence in areas that the government deemed “restricted” (i.e., generally reserved for the white population).
6. Mandela soon became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement forming 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.
For 20 years, Mandela directed peaceful, nonviolent acts of defiance against the South African government and its racist policies.
After the massacre of unarmed black South Africans by police forces at Sharpeville in 1960 and the subsequent banning of the ANC, Mandela abandoned his nonviolent stance and began advocating acts of sabotage against the South African regime.
7. Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid activism made him a frequent target of the authorities. In 1952, he was intermittently banned – severely restricted in travel, association, and speech.
On August 5 1962, Mandela was arrested at a road block in Natal, he was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.
In October 1963, the imprisoned Mandela was tried for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy in the infamous Rivonia Trial. Police had discovered large quantities of arms and equipment at the headquarters of the underground armed wing of the ANC.
On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, narrowly escaping the death penalty.
From 1964 to 1982 Mandela was confined at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town. Thereafter, he was kept at the maximum-security Pollsmoor Prison until 1988.
8. The South African government intermittently made conditional offers of freedom to Mandela.
- First, In 1976, on the condition that he status of the Transkei Bantustan and agree to reside there.
Transkei was an unrecognised state in the south-eastern region of South Africa from 1976 to 1994. It was a ‘Bantustan’ – an area set aside for black South Africans of Xhosa descent, aimed at the creation of self-governing “homelands” for the forced resettlement of the black population of South Africa, where the blacks are able to exercise political rights.
Nelson Mandela refused this offer!
- The second offer was made in 1985 where he was asked to renounce the use of violence.
Nelson Mandela refused on the principle that only free men were able to engage in such negotiations and, as a prisoner, he was not a free man.
9. On 11 February 1990, he was released from the prison.
10. On 10 May 1994, Mandela was sworn in as president of the country’s first multi-ethnic government.
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