Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

Long Walk to Freedom is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, a book destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history's greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life - an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph, which has, until now, been virtually unknown to most of the world.

The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children.

He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He recounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account of the unforgettable events since his

• 18 July 1918 . Born at Qunu, neat Umtata - Transkei
• His father : Henry Mgadla Mandela - Chief councillor to Thembuland. When he died Mandela became the chief's ward and was groomed for the chieftainship
• Mandela matriculated at Healdtown Methodist Boarding School and started a BA degree at Fort Hare.
• 1940 : As an SRC member he participated in a student strike and was expelled (as well as Oliver Tambo)
• Mandela completed his degree by correspondance from Johannesburg.
• Enrolled for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand.
• Mandela has held numerous positions in the ANC: NCYL secretary (1948); ANCYL president (1950); ANC Transvaal president (1952); deputy national president (1952) and ANC president (1991).
• 1944 : Helped found the ANC Youth League.
• 1949 : Programme of Action was adopted by the ANC.
• 1952 : Was elected national volunteer-in-chief of Defiance Campaign (organising resistance to discriminatory legislation).
• 1952 : Mandela and Tambo had opened the first black legal firm in the country. Mandela was ANC Transvaal president and deputy national president. A petition by the Transvaal Law Society to strike Mandela off the roll of attorneys was refused by the Supreme Court.
• 1960: The ANC was banned after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960.
• 1961: Mandela was detained - Went underground for a new national convention he went underground to lead a campaign for a new national convention.
• 1962 : Mandela left the country for military training in Algeria. When he returned he was arrested for leaving the country illegally. Was convincted and jailed for five years in November 1962.
• Robben Island: While in prison Mandela never compromised his political principle.
• 1970: He refused an offer of a remission of sentence (recognising the Transkei and settled there.)
• 1980: Refused the offer of President Botha : freedom and renunciation of violence.
• 11 February 1990 (a Sunday): Mandela was released.
• 10 May 1994 - June 1999: Mandela was democratically elected State President of South Africa.
• June 1999 : Nelson Mandela retired from Public life. He currently resides in his birth place - Qunu, Transkei.

Under the Apartheid system of government in South Africa it meant for Nelson Mandela and the black south-african people that they might be thrown into jail because they drank water from the "wrong fountain".

Apartheid also meant that for the same job as their white neighbours they were less paid, where their ancestors were considered by the government as "non human beings". And they hade to support this in heir daily life too.

That's why Nelson Mandela is for me much more than the great figure that he already is : he represents everything a human being should be, but such men are rare. He never gave up, he has never bent,whatever the situation he went through was. Whilst Nelson Mandela was in prison he continued his fight for freedom for all South African people.

His victory is immense: his lifelong fight became reality: the Apartheid is overcome ! And this gives even more weight to one of his citations:

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."