Nelson Mandela

South African · 1918 to 2013

Born Rolihlahla Mandela on July 18, 1918, in the village of Mvezo in the Transkei region of South Africa, he was the son of Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, chief of Mvezo and a councillor to the Thembu king. His father lost the chieftaincy in a dispute with the colonial magistrate, and the family moved to nearby Qunu, where Mandela grew up. He was given the name Nelson by a teacher on his first day at a Methodist mission school, following the era's custom of assigning English names to Black South African children. Educated at mission schools and Fort Hare College, he was expelled in 1940 for joining a student boycott and moved to Johannesburg, where he worked as an articled clerk and studied law at Witwatersrand University without graduating; he completed his LLB by correspondence from the University of South Africa only in 1989, while in prison. In 1944 he co-founded the African National Congress Youth League with Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, and in 1952 the two opened Mandela and Tambo, South Africa's first Black-run law firm. After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC, Mandela helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe, its armed wing, and went underground. Arrested in 1962, he was tried again at Rivonia in 1963 and 1964, where his statement from the dock ended with words that he was prepared to die for his ideals; sentenced to life imprisonment, he spent the next twenty-seven years in prison, mostly on Robben Island. Released on February 11, 1990, he led negotiations that dismantled apartheid, shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. de Klerk, and in 1994 was elected South Africa's first Black president in the country's first fully democratic election, publishing his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, that same year. He served a single term, established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and retired from public office in 1999. He married three times, to Evelyn Mase, Winnie Madikizela, and, on his eightieth birthday, Graça Machel. Mandela died on December 5, 2013, at his home in Johannesburg, at the age of ninety-five, and was buried in Qunu.