Nelson Mandela: Biography, imprisonment, death, family

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was the first President of South Africa, serving from 1994 to 1999. He was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and political leader. He was the country’s first black president and the first to be elected in a democratic election with full representation. His government aimed to undo apartheid’s legacy by combating institutionalised racism and promoting racial healing. He was the head of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997 and was an ideological African nationalist and socialist.

Biography 

Mandela was born in the town of Mvezo in Umtata, then part of South Africa’s Cape Province, on July 18, 1918. He was given the forename Rolihlahla, which means “troublemaker” in Xhosa, although he was later known by his clan name, Madiba. Ngubengcuka, his patrilineal great-grandfather, was the ruler of the Thembu Kingdom in South Africa’s modern Eastern Cape province’s Transkeian Territories. Nelson’s grandfather, Nelson Mandela, was one of Ngubengcuka’s sons and the source of his surname.

Mandela’s cadet branch of the royal family was morganatic, ineligible to inherit the throne but recognised as hereditary royal councillors, because he was the king’s child by a wife of the Ixhiba clan, a so-called Left-Hand House.

Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa Mandela (1880–1928), Nelson Mandela’s father, was a local chief and councillor to the monarch, appointed in 1915 after his predecessor was charged with corruption by a white governing magistrate. Gadla was fired for corruption in 1926, but Nelson learned that his father had lost his job for refusing to comply with the magistrate’s outrageous demands. Gadla was a polygamist with four wives, four sons, and nine daughters who lived in different villages. He was a devotee of the god Qamata. Nelson’s mother was Gadla’s third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, a member of the Xhosa amaMpemvu tribe and the daughter of Nkedama of the Right Hand House.

He went to Qunu Primary School, where his teacher, Miss Mdingane, gave him the name Nelson, as is customary for all kids to be given Christian names. 

He completed his Junior Certificate at Clarkebury Boarding Institute before enrolling at Healdtown, a prestigious Wesleyan secondary school. 

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Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University College of Fort Hare but was dismissed after participating in a student protest there.

When he returned to the Great Place at Mqhekezweni, the king was enraged and threatened to arrange spouses for him and his cousin Justice if he did not return to Fort Hare. Instead, they fled to Johannesburg, arriving in 1941. He worked as a mining security officer there and met Lazer Sidelsky after meeting Walter Sisulu, an estate agent. He then hired Witkin, Eidelman, and Sidelsky, an attorney firm, to write his articles. 

In 1943, he completed his BA at the University of South Africa and returned to Fort Hare to receive his diploma. 

Meanwhile, he enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand to pursue an LLB. He said he was a lousy student who dropped out of university in 1952 without receiving a diploma. After his release from prison in 1962, he resumed his studies at the University of London, although he did not complete his degree. 

He earned his LLB from the University of South Africa in 1989, during the last months of his incarceration. He received his diploma in his absence at a ceremony in Cape Town.

Career 

Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1944, after helping to form the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), after becoming increasingly politically committed since 1942.

Mandela climbed through the ranks of the ANCYL, and the ANC adopted a more radical mass-based program, the Programme of Action, in 1949, as a result of its activities. 

In 1952, he was appointed as the Defiance Campaign’s National Volunteer-in-Chief, with Maulvi Cachalia as his deputy. The ANC and the South African Indian Congress collaborated on this civil disobedience campaign against six unfair laws. For their roles in the campaign, he and 19 others were tried under the Suppression of Communism Act and sentenced to nine months of hard labor, suspended for two years.

Mandela was able to practice law after completing a two-year law diploma on top of his BA. In August 1952, he and Oliver Tambo founded Mandela & Tambo, South Africa’s first black-owned law business in the 1950s. 

For the first time, he was banned towards the end of 1952. When the Freedom Charter was adopted in Kliptown on June 26, 1955, he was only allowed to watch in secret as a restricted person.

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Imprisonment 

Mandela surreptitiously fled South Africa on January 11, 1962, under the assumed name David Motsamayi. He toured Africa and England to recruit support for the armed effort. In July 1962, he returned to South Africa after receiving military training in Morocco and Ethiopia. On August 5, he was apprehended at a police roadblock outside Howick while returning from KwaZulu-Natal, where he had informed ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli about his trip.

Many MK members assumed that the government had been given information about Mandela’s whereabouts, though Mandela himself dismissed such theories. In subsequent years, Donald Rickard, a former American diplomat, disclosed that the CIA had alerted the South African police of Mandela’s whereabouts because of his alleged ties to communists. Mandela was charged with encouraging workers’ strikes and fleeing the country without authorization while imprisoned in Johannesburg’s Marshall Square prison. While supporters demonstrated outside the court, Mandela, who Slovo represented as his legal advisor, planned to use the trial to highlight the ANC’s moral resistance to racism.

Outside the court, supporters demonstrated. He relocated to Pretoria, where Winnie could visit him, and began correspondence courses at the University of London International Programmes for a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree. His trial started in October, but he caused havoc by donning a traditional kaross, refusing to bring any witnesses, and turning his mitigation plea into a political speech. He was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison; supporters chanted Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika as he left the courthouse.

In what became known as the Rivonia Trial, Mandela joined ten men on trial for sabotage on October 9, 1963. His statements to the court at the end of his historic speech from the dock on April 20, 1964, while facing the death penalty, became immortalised.

On June 11, 1964, Nelson Mandela and seven other defendants, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg, Elias Motsoaledi, and Andrew Mlangeni, were found guilty and sentenced to life in jail the next day. Because Goldberg was white, he was taken to Pretoria Prison, while the others were transferred to Robben Island. 

In 1968, Mandela’s mother died, and his eldest son, Thembi, died in 1969. He was barred from attending their funerals.

Mandela, along with Sisulu, Mhlaba, and Mlangeni, was moved to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town on March 31, 1982. In October, Kathrada joined them. Mandela was imprisoned alone when he returned to prison in November 1985 after prostate surgery. Kobie Coetsee, the Minister of Justice, paid him a visit in the hospital.

 Later, Mandela sparked discussions for the last meeting between the apartheid regime and the African National Congress (ANC).

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He was admitted to the hospital on August 12, 1988, and diagnosed with Tuberculosis. After spending more than three months in two hospitals, he was transported to a housing unit at Victor Verster Prison outside Paarl on December 7, 1988, where he spent the last 14 months of his sentence. On Sunday, February 11, 1990, he was released from its confines, nine days after the ANC and the PAC were unbanned and nearly four months after his surviving Rivonia companions were released. He had turned down at least three conditional parole offers during his time in prison.

Mandela became involved in official talks to remove white minority rule and was elected President of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1991 to succeed his sick comrade Oliver Tambo. He and President FW de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and he voted for the first time on April 27, 1994.

Presidency

He became South Africa’s first democratically elected President on May 10, 1994. 

After one term as President, Mandela kept his pledge and stood down in 1999. He worked with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund he established in 1995 and the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation.

Family

Mandela was self-conscious about his masculinity and made frequent references to manhood. He was heterosexual, and according to historian Fatima Meer, he was readily enticed by women. Another biographer, Martin Meredith described him as naturally romantic, noting that he had connections with various women. Mandela was married three times, had six children, and had at least 17 grandkids and great-grandchildren.

 He was stern and demanding to his children, but he was more affectionate with his grandchildren. In October 1944, he married Evelyn Ntoko Mase; they divorced in March 1958 due to his adultery and frequent absences, his passion for revolutionary agitation, and the fact that she was a Jehovah’s Witness, a religion that requires political neutrality. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, a social worker, was Mandela’s second wife, whom he married in June 1958. In March of 1996, they divorced. In July 1998, on his 80th birthday, Mandela married his third wife, Graça Machel.

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Death

Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa and the first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election, died on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95, after a long-term lung ailment. He died at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg, at around 20:50 local time, accompanied by his family. At 23:45, then-President Jacob Zuma announced his death on national television. Governments, international organizations, and well-known individuals responded, garnering worldwide media attention.

A 10-day national mourning period was observed in South Africa. Several memorial services were held across the country during this time. The memorial service took place on December 10 at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, where the 95,000-seat stadium was two-thirds full due to the cold, rain, and transportation issues. From the 11th to the 13th of December 2013, Nelson Mandela’s body lay in state at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. On December 15 2013, a state funeral was performed at Qunu, Eastern Cape, where his body was buried.

Legacy 

Within South Africa, Mandela was universally regarded as both the father of the nation and the founding father of democracy by the time of his death. He was a global star outside of South Africa, with Rita Barnard, a South African studies professor, characterizing him as “one of the most admired individuals of our time.” He was dubbed “a modern democratic hero” by one biographer.

During his incarceration in the 1980s, Mandela rose to international prominence as the world’s most famous political prisoner, a symbol of the anti-apartheid movement, and an icon for millions who accepted the goal of human equality. His biographer described Mandela in 1986 as “the epitome of the struggle for liberation” in South Africa.

Mandela received around 250 honors, accolades, prizes, honorary degrees, and citizenship in appreciation of his political achievements during his life. The Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Lenin Peace Prize of the Soviet Union, and the Libyan Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights were among his honors. In 1990, India bestowed the Bharat Ratna upon him, while Pakistan bestowed the Nishan-e-Pakistan on him in 1992.

Mandela has also been portrayed in several films. Some, like the 2013 feature film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and the 1996 documentary Mandela, have centered on his long life, while others, like the 2009 feature film Invictus and the 2010 documentary The 16th Man, have centered on key incidents in his life. It has been said that the American film industry, through Invictus and other films, played a big role in shaping Mandela’s global image.

Conclusion 

Nelson Mandela was a dedicated and disciplined man. He was an activist determined to fight for the rights of his people. Despite the fact that he spent 27 years in prison, that did not prevent him from making sure that his vision for his nation became a reality. 

Even after his death, his legacy still lives on as he is described as one of the national heroes in Africa and the world.

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