Nelson Mandela Essay, Research Paper

Influential Figures During Apartheid

Nelson Mandela: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born on July 19, 1918, near Umtata, Transkei. To pursue a political career, he renounced his right to succeed his father as chief of the Tembu tribe. He studied law by correspondence. In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and helped found its influential Youth League. His first jail sentence, which was suspended, was for the ANC’s 1952 Defiance Against Unjust Laws Campaign.

Mandela became a fugitive in the early 1960’s. In 1962 he was caught, and two years later he was convicted and jailed for acts of sabotage while leading an underground wing of the banned African National Congress. As his legend grew, a campaign to free him intensified in the 1980’s. Mandela was set free on February 11, 1990. In January 1990, Nelson Mandela was a political prisoner in South Africa. By April 1994, he was the elected president of his country. In his early years, he led the armed struggle against South Africa’s official policy of racial segregation, apartheid. Ultimately he became a worldwide symbol of victory against apartheid when he was freed from his life sentence in prison. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with South Africa’s president, F.W. de Klerk, for their peaceful struggle to bring a nonracial democracy to South Africa. Along with millions of other black South Africans, Mandela voted for the first time in the election that brought him to power in April 1994. During his presidency, the economy and the quality of life for blacks gradually improved.