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Nelson Mandela

July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. He joined the African National Congress in 1943, co-founded its Youth League in 1944, and served as president of the ANC from 1991 to 1997. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid and fostering racial reconciliation.

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Biography

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 in the Eastern Cape, into the royal family of the Thembu people. He studied law, joined the African National Congress in 1944 and helped found its Youth League. After the National Party introduced apartheid in 1948, he became a leader of the Defiance Campaign and was one of the accused in the long Treason Trial.

After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 the ANC was banned, and Mandela helped set up its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. He was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial in 1964. He spent 27 years in prison, most of them on Robben Island, and became the world's best-known political prisoner.

F. W. de Klerk freed him in February 1990. He led the ANC in negotiations to end apartheid, and the two men shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. After the first all-race elections in 1994 he became South Africa's first Black president and set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He stepped down in 1999 and died in 2013.