Nelson Mandela

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in the black homeland of Transkei on July 18, 1918. Nelson was added later, by a primary school teacher. He joined a law firm in Johannesburg as an apprentice where years of daily exposure to the inhumanities of apartheid, where being black reduced one to the status of a nonperson, kindled in him courage to change the world.

He joined the Youth League of the African National Congress and became involved in programs of passive resistance against the laws that forced blacks to carry passes and kept them in a position of permanent servility. He was arrested in 1964 and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island. He spent twenty-seven in prison.

Nelson Mandela was released on February 18, 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. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Fredrik Willem de Klerk in 1993, and was elected President of South Africa in 1994. To millions of people around the world, Nelson Mandela stands for the triumph of dignity and hope over despair and hatred, of self-discipline and love over persecution and evil.

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