Nelson Mandela, the famous and revered South African leader, passed away December 5th at the age of 95. He was widely admired the world over for his opposition to Apartheid, the practice of government-enforced segregation in South Africa that was in place until the 1990s. Mandela, who was imprisoned for years because of his use of both armed and peaceful resistance, was eventually set free after an international campaign and became the first black president of South Africa.
Nelson Mandela was born in 1918. He attended Fort Hare University, from which he was expelled in 1941 for participating in a strike. In 1942, he joined the ANC (African National Congress). Mandela organized peaceful protests and was arrested several times. He also divorced his first wife and was remarried to Winnie Madikizela. In 1961 he helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation), a militant group that advocated violent means to end Apartheid. In 1964, he and several of his colleagues were sentenced to life in prison. He remained in prison until 1990. Soon after he was released, his wife was sentenced to six years in prison for taking part in the kidnapping and beating of four black South Africans. He and his wife Winnie became estranged and he divorced her in 1996. He later remarried to a woman that he remained married to for the rest of his life, Graca Machel.
In 1993, his life’s work finally paid off, and it was declared that the next year South Africa would finally have free elections.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected the president of South Africa, making him the first black man to have done so.
He was as great a president as he was a reformer, and he helped make South Africa one of the more secure nations on the continent, making sure that widespread racial violence on both sides was avoided and seeking reconciliation between the races.
He was admired the almost by everyone, despite occasional claims that he was a Marxist, a terrorist, or both, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, which he shared with his white colleague, FW deClerk, a former president of the country who helped to end Apartheid. Despite the fact that in his younger days he used violence, he should be remembered as someone who was able to avoid violence when he became president, and who achieved peace between the white and black races in his country.
Mandela died at the same time a much-anticipated biopic on his life starring Idris Elba was beginning to be released. The biopic, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, focuses mainly on his imprisonment in South Africa and the campaign to have him freed. The film was being screened in London, with Mandela’s daughters and members of the royal family attending, when news broke of his death.
