In our modern history, a lot of people tried to have the leadership glory to themselves, but most of them has no place in our proudly history. Very few of the leaders who take place in our hearts and will remain in our hearts because of their passion, commitment, love of their country, peace makers, and many other qualifications. Nelson Mandela is one of the greatest leaders of all time. He is the one who spent his entire life fighting. It doesn't matter what he fought for, but what matters is how do we view him in our modern day society. Is he actually a Hero or just a leader that had a certain type of revolution and that is it.
Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918 in a royal family of the who speaks Xhosa in the Tembu tribe in a village called Mvezo in South Africa. His father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, served as chief. His mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of Mphakanyiswa four wives, who together had nine daughters and four sons. After the death of his father in 1927, Mandela became known by his birth name, Rolihlahla. The nine years old kid was adopted by a high-ranking Thembu regent named Jongintaba Dalindyebo, who began to prepare him at a young age for a role within the tribal leadership. He started hearing the elders’ stories of his ancestors during the wars of resistance and he also dreamed of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people.
Nelson Mandela is the first in his family to receive formal education. He completed his primary studies at a local missionary school where one of his teachers started giving the students English names, as a part of an assignment, which the young student, Rolihlahla, became Nelson. Then he went to attend the Clarkebury Boarding Institute and to Healdtown school, which is a Methodist secondary school. Mandela was really good in boxing and track as well as academics. In 1939 Mandela entered the University of Fort Hare, as he was selected out of a few people at the time, because it is the only westernized style higher learning institute for the South African blacks at the time. After a year, he and several other students including Oliver Tambo, his best friend and future business partner, were sent home for participating in a boycott against university policies and rules.
Mandela went to Johannesburg and worked first as a night watchman and then as a law clerk while completing his bachelor’s degree by correspondence. He studied law at the University of Witwatersrand to start fight for what he saw as his vision to revolutionize the world. He became involved in the movement against racial discrimination and the important relationships between black and white activists. In 1944, Mandela joined the African National Congress and worked with other party members including Oliver Tambo to establish its youth league, which is later called the ANCYL. During the same year, Mandela met and married his first wife Evelyn Ntoko Mase. She became the mother of his first four children and then they declared a divorce in the year of 1957.
Nelson Mandela’s commitment to politics and to the ANC grew stronger after the 1948 election victory of the dominated National Party which introduced a formal system of racial classification and segregation that restricted nonwhites’ basic rights and barred them from government while maintaining white minority rule. During the year after, the African National Congress adopted the ANCYL’s plan to achieve full citizenship for all South Africans through boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience, and other nonviolent methods. Mandela helped lead the ANC’s 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws by traveling across the country to organize protests against discriminatory policies and introduced the program known as the Freedom Charter, which is approved by the Congress of the People in 1955. Also in 1952, Mandela and Tambo opened South Africa’s first black law firm, which offered free and or low cost legal counsel to those affected by unfair legislation.
On December 5, 1956, Mandela and 155 other activists were arrested and went on trial for treason. All of the defendants were found not guilty in 1961, but in the meantime tensions inside the ANC rose up very fast with a militant faction splitting off in 1959 to form the Pan Africanist Congress, which is known later as the PAC. The year after, the police opened fire on peaceful black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people. As panic, anger, and disturbance is all over the country, massacres occurred after that by the police who is trying to protect the government. The government banned both the ANC and the PAC and forced them to go underground and disappear. At the same time, Mandela decided that the time had come for a more radical approach than passive resistance and violence is the solution.
In 1961, Nelson Mandela founded and became the first leader of MK, which is a new armed wing of the ANC. Several years later, during the trial that would put him behind bars for nearly three decades he justified his action by saying that we are asking for our rights, and the government who keeps saying that they demand peace, faced our nonviolent actions to demand our rights with force and violence, therefore, violence is the solution to respond back their actions. Under Mandela’s leadership, MK launched a campaign against the government, which declared South Africa a republic and withdrawn from the British Commonwealth.
In January 1962, Mandela traveled abroad illegally to attend a conference of African nationalist leaders in Ethiopia and to visit Oliver Tambo in London then undergo guerilla training in Algeria. On August 5, right after his return, he was arrested and then sentenced to five years in prison for leaving the country and organizing a 1961 workers’ strike. Then in July, the police broke through an ANC hidden place in Rivonia, a village on the border of Johannesburg, and arrested a racially diverse group of MK leaders who had gathered to debate the merits of a guerilla revolution. Evidence was found involving Mandela and other activists who were brought to stand trial for disruption, treason and violent conspiracy alongside their own associated convictions. Mandela and seven other defendants tried to escaped the gallows but they couldn't. They were sentenced to life imprisonment during the Rivonia Trial which lasted eight months and attracted a lot of the international attention for it's tough punishment. Mandela admitted to some of the charges against him while defending the ANC’s actions and denouncing the injustices of the government but he said that he lived his life to fight for the Democracy and he will fight for it to his last breath.
He was sent to prison for 27 years. The first 18 years, he had the toughest punishments and was treated in an inhuman way. But his knowledge helped him to be a mentor to his fellow prisoners during the toughest time of their life which helped him to get better treatment. In 1982 Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland and in 1988 he was placed under house arrest in minimum security correctional facility. During the year after, newly elected president F. W. de Klerk accepted the ANC and called for a non racial South Africa. On February 11, 1990, he ordered Mandela’s release.
Nelson Mandela led the ANC in its negotiations with the governing National Party and other South African political organizations to end racism and to establish a multiracial government. The talks earned Mandela and de Klerk the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993. On April 26, 1994, more than 22 million South Africans voted in the country’s first multiracial parliamentary elections in history. Majority chose the ANC to lead the country, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as the first black president of South Africa, with de Klerk serving as his first deputy. He introduced a lot of social and economic programs designed to improve the living standards of South Africa’s black population. He retired from politics at the end of his first term as president and he was successful during his period of presidency. Nelson Mandela died on December 5, 2013 from a recurring lung infection. His legacy will remain forever because he is a hero to remember. The entire world celebrates on July 18th every year Nelson Mandela International Day to honor his legacy.