Who was Nelson Mandela?
Rolihlahla Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in Mvezo, in the Eastern Cape, into the Thembu royal house; a schoolteacher gave him the name Nelson. Trained as a lawyer, he opened South Africa's first Black law practice with Oliver Tambo in Johannesburg in 1952.
A leader of the African National Congress, he helped organise the 1952 Defiance Campaign and, after the Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC in 1960, co-founded its armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe. At the Rivonia Trial in 1964 he told the court that a free, democratic society was "an ideal for which I am prepared to die", and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
He spent 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island, and was released on 11 February 1990. He shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk, was elected president in South Africa's first democratic election in 1994 and served one term, making reconciliation the work of his presidency. He died in Johannesburg on 5 December 2013.
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