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Nelson Mandela Biography
in full Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
( 1918 – )
An article from Biography.com
Nelson Mandela. (2011). Biography.com. Retrieved 12:05, Sep
28 2011 from
http://www.biography.com/articles/NelsonMandela-9397017
South African statesman and president (1994-99). Born
Rolihlahla Mandela on July 18, 1918 in Transkei, South
Africa.
Mandela's father had four wives and Mandela's mother,
Nosekeni Fanny, was the third. His father died when Mandela
was nine years-old and he is taken in by a high ranking
chief who
provides him with an education for the civil service. It is
in college
where Mandela develops a nationalist position and begins to
advocate for black African rights. He is arrested and
imprisoned
for twenty-seven years. In time, as the white South African
government reeled under international political pressure,
Mandela was released and commenced working with the South
African white government to transition to black majority
rule and
away from apartheid. At age 77, Mandela was elected
President of South Africa, serving only one term. He has since then
spent his life promoting equality and world peace in many
parts of the world.
There was little in Nelson Mandela's early life to indicate
that he would become a leader of an independence
movement and eventually president of his country. He was
born Rolihlahla Mandela in rural South Africa in the tiny village
of Mvezo, on the banks of the Mbashe River in the province
of Transkei. "Rolihlahla" in the language of Xhosa literally
means "pulling the branch of a tree," but more
commonly means "troublemaker."
His father was destined to be a chief and for years served
as a counselor to tribal chiefs. But over a dispute with
the local colonial magistrate, he lost his title and his
fortune. Rolihlahla was only an infant at the time and the loss of status
forced his mother to move the family to Qunu, an even
smaller village north of Mvezo. The village was nestled in a narrow
grassy valley. There were no roads, only foot paths that
linked the pastures where livestock grazed. The family lived in huts
and ate a local harvest of maize, sorghum, pumpkin, and
beans, which was all the family could afford. Water came from
springs and streams and cooking was done outdoors. Nelson
played the games of young boys, acting out male rights-of -
passage scenarios with toys he made himself from the natural
materials available, tree branches and clay.
At the suggestion of one of Rolihlahla's father's friends,
he was baptized into the Methodist church and became
the first in his family to attend school. As was the custom
at the time, and probably due to the bias of the British
educational system in South Africa, his teacher told him that
his new first name would be "Nelson."
Nelson Mandela's father died of lung disease when Nelson was
nine years old. From that point, his life changed
dramatically. He was adopted by Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo,
the acting regent of the Thembu people. This gesture was
done as a favor to Nelson's father who, years earlier, had
recommended Jongintaba be made chief. Nelson left the carefree
life he knew in Qunu, fearing he would never see is village
again. He traveled by motorcar to Mqhekezweni, the provincial
capital of Thembuland, to the chief's royal residence.
Though he had not forgotten his beloved village of Qunu, he quickly
adopted to the new, more sophisticated surroundings of
Mqhekezweni.
Mandela was given the same status and responsibilities as
the regent's two other children, son Justice, the oldest
and Nomafu, the regent's daughter. Mandela took classes in a
one-room school next to the palace, studying English, Xhosa,
history, and geography. It was during this period that
Mandela developed his interest in African history from elder chiefs
who came to the Great Palace on official business. He heard
of how the African people had lived in relative peace until the
coming of the white people. Before then, the elders said,
the children of southern Africa lived as brothers, but the white
man shattered this fellowship. The black man shared the
land, the air, and the water with the white man, but the white
man took all this for himself.
Nelson Mandela And Oprah Winfrey
Nelson Mandela with Oprah Winfrey after
they don construction hard hats to break
the ground for her $10 million Leadership
Academy for Girls in South Africa. She
described Mandela as her 'hero' and he
called her a 'queen.' -- 2002
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When Mandela was sixteen, it was time for him to partake in
the circumcision ritual that would carry him into
manhood. The ceremony of circumcision was not just a
surgical procedure, but an elaborate ritual in preparation for
manhood. In the African tradition, an uncircumcised male
could not inherit his father's wealth, marry or officiate at tribal
rituals. Mandela participated in the ceremony with
twenty-five other boys. He welcomed the opportunity to partake in his
people's customs and felt ready to make the transition from
boyhood to manhood. But during the proceedings, Chief
Meligqili, the main speaker at the ceremony, spoke sadly of
the young men as a generation enslaved in their own country.
Because their land was under the control of the white man,
they would never have the power to govern themselves. The
chief went on to lament that the promise of the young men
would be squandered as they struggled to make a living and
perform mindless chores for the white man. Mandela would
later say that that the chief's words didn't make total sense to
him at the time, but they would work on him and would
eventually formulate his resolve for an independent South Africa.
From the time Mandela came under the guardianship of the Regent
Jongintaba, he was groomed to assume high
office, though not as a chief, but as a counselor to one. As
Thembu royalty, Nelson attended Wesleyan mission school,
Clarkebury Boarding Institute and Wesleyan College. There he
found interest and success in his academic studies through
"plain hard work." He also excelled in track and
later boxing. At first, he is mocked as a "country boy," but
eventually makes
friends with several classmates, including Mathona, his
first female friend.
In 1939, Nelson Mandela enrolled at the University College
of Fort Hare, the only residential center of higher
learning for blacks in South Africa. Fort Hare was
considered Africa's equivalent of Oxford or Harvard, drawing scholars from
all parts of sub-Sahara Africa. In his first year, Mandela
took the required courses, but focused on Roman Dutch law to
prepare for a career in civil service as an interpreter or
clerk, the best profession a black man could obtain.
In his second year, he was elected to the Student
Representative Council (SRC). For some time students had been
dissatisfied with the food and lack of power held by the
SRC. During this election, a majority of students voted to boycott
unless their demands were met. Mandela aligned with the
majority of the students and resigned his position. Seeing this as
an act of insubordination, the university's Dr. Kerr
expelled Mandela for the rest of the year, telling him he could come back
when he agreed to serve on the SRC. When Mandela returned
home, the regent was furious and told him unequivocally he
would recant his decision and go back to school in the fall.
A few weeks after Mandela arrival at home, Regent Jongintaba
announced he had arranged a marriage for him.
The regent was within his right as tribal custom dictated
and wanted to make sure Mandela's life was set during the
regent's lifetime. Mandela was shocked and felt trapped.
Believing he had no other option, he ran away to Johannesburg,
where he worked in a variety of jobs, including guard and
clerk, while completing his bachelor's degree via correspondence
courses. He then enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand
to study law. He became actively involved in the antiapartheid
movement and joined the African National Congress (ANC) in
1942.
Within the ANC, a small group of young Africans banded
together calling themselves 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. Specifically, the group believed that the
ANC's old tactics of polite petitioning were ineffective. In
1949, the ANC officially adopted the Youth League's methods of
boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-cooperation with
policy goals of full citizenship, redistribution of land, trade
union rights, and free and compulsory education for all
children.
For 20 years, Mandela directed a campaign of peaceful,
non-violent defiance against the South African government
and its racist policies, including the 1952 Defiance
Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He founded the law firm
Mandela and Tambo, partnering with Oliver Tambo, a brilliant
student he had earlier met at Fort Hare. The law firm
provided free and low-cost legal counsel to unrepresented
blacks.
In 1956, Mandela and 150 others were arrested and charged
with treason for their political advocacy, though they
were eventually acquitted. Meanwhile, the ANC was being challenged
by the Africanists, a new breed of Black activists who
believed that the pacifist method of the ANC was
ineffective. By 1959, the ANC lost much of its militant support when the
Africanists broke away to form the Pan-Africanist Congress.
In 1961, Mandela, who was formerly committed to non-violent
protest, began to believe that armed struggle was
the only way to achieve change. He co-founded Umkhonto we
Sizwe, also known as MK, an armed offshoot of the ANC
dedicated to sabotage and guerilla war tactics to end
apartheid. He orchestrated a three-day national workers strike in
1961 for which he was arrested in 1962. He was sentenced to
five years in prison for the strike, and then brought to trial
again in 1963. This time, he and 10 other ANC leaders were sentenced
to life imprisonment for political offenses, including
sabotage.
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Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island for 18 of his
27 years in prison. As a black political prisoner, he
received the lowest level of treatment. However, he was able
to earn a Bachelor of Law degree through a University of
London correspondence program while incarcerated. A 1981
memoir by South African intelligence agent Gordon Winter
described a plot by the South African government to arrange
for Mandela's escape so as to shoot him during the recapture.
The plot, was foiled by British intelligence, Mandela
continued to be such a potent symbol of black resistance that a
coordinated international campaign for his release was
launched. This international groundswell of support exemplified the
power and esteem Mandela had in the global political
community.
In 1982, Mandela and other ANC leaders were moved to
Pollsmoor Prison, allegedly to enable contact between
them and the South African government. In 1985, President
P.W. Botha offered Mandela's release in exchange for
renouncing armed struggle; the prisoner flatly rejected the
offer. With increasing local and international pressure for his
release, the government participated in several talks with
Mandela over the years, but no deal was made. It wasn't until
Botha suffered a stroke and was replaced by Frederik Willem
de Klerk that Mandela's release was announced in February
1990. De Klerk unbanned the ANC, removed restrictions on
political groups, and suspended executions.
Upon his release, Mandela immediately urged foreign powers
not to reduce their pressure on the South African
government for constitutional reform. While he stated his
commitment to work toward peace, he declared that the ANC's
armed struggle would continue until the black majority
received the right to vote.
Mandela was elected president of the African National
Congress in 1991 with lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver
Tambo, serving as National Chairperson. Mandela continued to
negotiate with President F.W. de Klerk toward the country's
first multi-racial elections. White South Africans were
willing to share power, but many black South Africans wanted a
complete transfer of power. The negotiations were often
strained and news of violent eruptions, including the
assassination of ANC leader Chris Hani, continued throughout
the country. Mandela had to keep a delicate balance of
political pressure and intense negotiations amid the
demonstrations and armed resistance.
Negotiation prevailed, however, and on April 27, 1994, South
Africa held its first democratic elections. At age 77,
Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the country's first black
president on May 10, 1994, with de Klerk as his first deputy. In
1993, Mandela shared the Nobel Prize for Peace with de Klerk
for their work towards dismantling apartheid and in 1995 he
was awarded the Order of Merit. In 1994, Mandela published
his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, much of which he
had secretly written while in prison.
From 1994 until June 1999, Mandela worked to bring about the
transition from minority rule and apartheid to
black majority rule. He used the nation's enthusiasm for
sports as a pivot point to promote reconciliation between whites
and blacks, encouraging black South Africans to support the
once hated South African national rugby team. In 1995, South
Africa came on the world stage by hosting the Rugby World
Cup, which brought further recognition and prestige to the
young republic.
During his presidency, Mandela also worked to protect South
Africa's economy from collapse and was officially
launched South Africa's government. Through his
Reconstruction and Development Plan, he had the government funding
the creation of jobs, housing, and basic health care. In
1996, he signed into law the new South African constitution, which
established a strong central government based on majority
rule and guaranteed rights of minorities and freedom of
expression.
Mandela retired from active politics at the 1999 general
election but maintained a busy schedule, raising money
for his Mandela Foundation to build schools and clinics in
South Africa's rural heartland and serving as a mediator in
Burundi's civil war. He also published a number of books on
his life and struggle, among them, No Easy Walk to Freedom,
Nelson Mandela: The Struggle is my Life, and Nelson
Mandela's Favorite African Folktales. He was diagnosed and treated for
prostate cancer in 2001 and in June 2004, at age 85, he
announced his formal retirement from public life and returned to
his native village of Qunu.
On July 18, 2007, Mandela convened a group of world leaders,
including Graca Machel, Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan,
Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing,
Mary Robinson and Muhammad Yunus to address the world's
toughest issues. Named "The Elders," the group is
committed to working publicly and privately to find solutions to problems
around the globe. Since its inception, "The
Elders" has made an impact in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa promoting
peace, women's equality, demanding an end to atrocities, and
supporting initiatives to address humanitarian crises and
promote democracy. Mandela is also committed to the fight
against AIDS, a disease that killed his son, Makgatho Mandela,
in 2005.
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Mandela was married three times: to Evelyn Ntoko Mase from
until 1944-1957, they had four children; to Winnie
Madikizela-Mandela (1958-1996), they had two daughters; and
to Graça Machel in 1998.
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Related Works
2005 Emerging Voices: A Report On Education In South African
Rural Communities
2005 Witness to AIDS
2002 Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales
2002 Wild at Heart: Man and Beast in Southern Africa
2002 The Story of My Life: South Africa Seen Through the
Eyes of Its Children
2002 Reflections in Prison: Voices from the South African
Liberation Struggle
2002 Madiba Magic: Nelson Mandela's Favorite Stories for
Children
2002 Letters to Madiba: Voices of South African Children
1998 Integration or Fragmentation: The Housing Generator
Competition for South African Cities
1998 The Building Has Begun!: Government's Report to the Nation
1997 The Essential Nelson Mandela
1997 South and Southern Africa into the Next Century
1996 Mandela: An Illustrated Autobiography
1996 The United Nations and Apartheid
1995 Transitional Justice
1995 Building a New South Africa
1994 Invest in Peace
1994 A Time to Build: Addresses by the President, Mr. Nelson
R. Mandela, at His Inauguration, the Opening of
Parliament
1994 Voices from Robben Island
1993 Nelson Mandela Speaks
1992 India's Message of Peace
1991 How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in
Today's World
1990 Nelson Mandela Speeches, 1990: Intensify the Struggle
to Abolish Apartheid
1990 Walk the Last Mile with Us: Nelson Mandela's Speeches
in Ireland
1990 L'Annee Mandela
1978 Struggle Is My Life
1973 No Easy Walk to Freedom: Articles, Speeches and Trial
Addresses of Nelson Mandela
1970 I Am Prepared to Die
ምንም አስተያየቶች የሉም:
አስተያየት ይለጥፉ