Twenty-Seven Years

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 in the village of Mvezo, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. His father was a chief's counsellor of the Thembu people. His first name, Rolihlahla, is often translated as "troublemaker". At school, a teacher gave him the English name Nelson.

He grew up herding cattle, listening to the elders at the royal court settle disputes, and learning that a good leader listens first and speaks last.

Apartheid

South Africa at that time was ruled by its white minority. From 1948, the government introduced a system called apartheid, meaning "apartness". By law, Black, Indian and mixed-race South Africans were separated from white South Africans and treated as second-class citizens. They could not vote. They had to carry passes. They were forced to live in certain areas, attend separate and poorer schools, and use separate hospitals, buses and beaches.

Mandela studied law and, with his friend Oliver Tambo, opened South Africa's first Black-run law firm in Johannesburg. He joined the African National Congress, the ANC, which campaigned against apartheid.

At first, the ANC used peaceful protest. But in 1960, police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators at Sharpeville, killing 69 people. The government banned the ANC. Mandela and others decided that peaceful protest alone was no longer enough, and helped form an armed wing to carry out sabotage against government targets.

Prison

Mandela was arrested in 1962. In 1964, at the end of what became known as the Rivonia Trial, he and several others were sentenced to life imprisonment.

He was sent to Robben Island, a prison on a windswept island off the coast of Cape Town. He spent eighteen years there. His cell was tiny, about two metres by two and a half. He slept on a mat on the floor. By day, he and the other prisoners were forced to break rocks and dig lime in a quarry, where the glare of the white stone damaged his eyes.

He was allowed one visitor and one letter every six months at first. When his mother died, and then his eldest son was killed in a car accident, he was not allowed to attend their funerals.

Inside the walls

Yet Mandela used his time in prison. He studied. He learned Afrikaans, the language of most of his jailers, and studied their history, so he could understand them. He treated the guards with dignity and politeness, and over the years some of them came to respect him deeply.

The prisoners organised classes for each other, so that Robben Island became known as "the University". Outside, Mandela's name became a symbol around the world. People marched, sang and campaigned for his release. Many countries imposed sanctions on South Africa.

In 1982 he was moved to a prison on the mainland, and in the late 1980s, secretly, the government began talking to him.

Free

On 11 February 1990, after twenty-seven years in prison, Nelson Mandela walked out of the gates of Victor Verster Prison, holding hands with his wife, Winnie, and raising his fist. He was seventy-one. The moment was broadcast live around the world.

Many people feared that South Africa would explode into civil war. There was terrible violence in the years that followed. But Mandela worked with the white president, F. W. de Klerk, to negotiate an end to apartheid. In 1993, the two men shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

President

In April 1994, South Africa held its first election in which people of all races could vote. Millions of people stood in queues for hours to vote for the first time in their lives.

Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first Black president.

He invited one of his former jailers to his inauguration. He set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where victims could tell what had happened to them, and those who had committed crimes could confess and ask for amnesty. He spoke of a "rainbow nation", where people of all backgrounds would belong.

The green jersey

One of the most famous moments came in 1995. South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup. To many Black South Africans, the national rugby team, the Springboks, was a symbol of apartheid, and its green and gold jersey was hated.

Mandela chose to support the team anyway. When South Africa won the final, he walked onto the pitch wearing a Springbok jersey and cap, to hand the trophy to the white captain, François Pienaar. The mostly white crowd, sixty thousand people, began chanting his name.

For many, it was the moment the country began to believe it could be one nation.

Afterwards

Mandela served only one term as president, stepping down in 1999. He spent his later years campaigning for children, for education and against HIV/AIDS, after his own son died of the disease.

He died in 2013, at the age of ninety-five. His birthday, 18 July, is marked by the United Nations as Nelson Mandela International Day.

Want to read more?

Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, is one of the great life stories of the twentieth century. John Carlin's Playing the Enemy tells the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup in detail, and inspired the film Invictus.