Nelson Mandela biography

Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University College of Fort Hare, but did not complete the degree there, as he was expelled for joining in a student protest.

He completed his BA through the University of South Africa and went back to Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943.

On his return to the Great Place, at Mkhekezweni, the King was furious and said if he didn’t return to Fort Hare he would arrange wives for him and his cousin, Justice.

They ran away to Johannesburg in 1941.

There he worked as a mine security officer and, after meeting Walter Sisulu, an estate agent who introduced him to Lazar Sidelsky, he then served his articles through the firm of attorneys Witkin Eidelman and Sidelsky.

Meanwhile he began studying for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand.

By his own admission he was a poor student and left the university in 1948, without graduating.

He only started studying again through the University of London and also did not complete that degree.

In 1989, while in the last months of his imprisonment, he obtained an LLB through the University of South Africa. He graduated in absentia at a ceremony in Cape Town.

While increasingly politically involved from 1942, he joined the African National Congress only in 1944, when he helped to form the ANC Youth League.

He got engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party’s apartheid policies after 1948.

In 1952, Mandela was chosen as the national volunteer-in-chief of the Defiance Campaign, with Maulvi Cachalia as his deputy. This campaign of civil disobedience against six unjust laws was a joint programme between the ANC and the South African Indian Congress.

He and 19 others were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for their part in the campaign and sentenced to nine months hard labour, suspended for two years.

In August, 1952, Mandela and Oliver Reginald Tambo established South Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela and Tambo.

In 1952 he was banned for the first time.

Then, on December 5, 1955, Mandela, together with 156 activists, was arrested in a countrywide police swoop.

They were charged with treason in a marathon trial which lasted from 1956 to 1961, when they were acquitted.

As soon as he and his colleagues were acquitted in the Treason Trial, Mandela went underground and began planning a national strike for March 29, 30 and 31.

In the face of a massive mobilisation of state security the strike was called off early.

On January 11, 1962, using the adopted name David Motsamayi, Mandela left South Africa secretly.

He then travelled around Africa and visited England to gain support for the armed struggle.

He received military training in Morocco and Ethiopia and returned to South Africa in July, 1962.

He was arrested in a police roadblock outside Howick on August 5, while returning from KwaZulu-Natal, where he had briefed ANC president Chief Albert Luthuli about his trip.

Mandela was charged with leaving the country illegally and inciting workers to strike.

He was convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment, which he began serving in the Pretoria Local Prison.

On May 27, 1963, he was transferred to Robben Island, but returned to Pretoria on June 12.

Within a month police raided a secret hide-out in Rivonia, used by ANC and Communist Party activists, and several of his comrades were arrested.

In October, Mandela joined nine others on trial for sabotage, in what became known as the Rivonia Trial.

Facing the death penalty, his words to the court at the end of his famous “Speech from the Dock”, on April 20, 1964, became immortalised: “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 persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”.

On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment.

From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated in Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.

During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela’s reputation grew steadily.

He was widely accepted as the most significant black leader in South Africa and became a potent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement gathered strength.

He consistently refused to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom.

After spending 27 years in prison, he was released on February 11, 1990.

After his release, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into his life’s work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier.

In 1991, following the unbanning of the ANC, Mandela was elected its president at its first national conference inside South Africa after the unbanning, since 1960, when the organisation was banned.

Mandela’s lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver Reginald Tambo, became the organisation’s national chairperson.

Mandela became a world icon when he walked out of prison, a forgiving man.

On May 10, 1994, he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected President.