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Nelson mandela biography best: 1 The Washing of

Though fraught with tension and conducted against a backdrop of political instability, the talks earned Mandela and de Klerk the Nobel Peace Prize in December An overwhelming majority chose the ANC to lead the country, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as the first Black president of South Africa, with de Klerk serving as his first deputy. As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights and political violations committed by both supporters and opponents of apartheid between and In Mandela presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution, which established a strong central government based on majority rule and prohibited discrimination against minorities, including whites.

His marriage to Winnie had ended in divorce in The following year, he retired from politics at the end of his first term as president and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki of the ANC. After leaving office, Nelson Mandela remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own country and around the world. He established a number of organizations, including the influential Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Elders, an independent group of public figures committed to addressing global problems and easing human suffering.

InMandela became a vocal advocate of AIDS awareness and treatment programs in a culture where the epidemic had been cloaked in stigma and ignorance. The disease later claimed the life of his son Makgatho and is believed to affect more people in South Africa than in any other country. Treated for prostate cancer in and weakened by other health issues, Mandela grew increasingly frail in his later years and scaled back his schedule of public appearances.

Nelson Mandela died on December 5, from a recurring lung infection. After receiving his primary education at a local mission school, where he was given the name Nelson, he was sent to the Clarkebury Boarding Institute for his Junior Certificate and then to Healdtown, a reputable Wesleyan secondary school, where he matriculated. He was suspended from college for joining a protest boycott, along with Oliver Tambo.

Shortly after his return to the royal homestead, he and his cousin, Justice, ran away to Johannesburg to avoid arranged marriages and for a short period he worked as a mine policeman. Mandela was introduced to Walter Sisulu in and it was Sisulu who arranged for him to serve his articles at Lazar Sidelsky's law firm. Completing his BA through the University of South Africa Unisa inhe commenced study for his Bachelor of Laws Degree shortly afterwards though he left the University of the Witwatersrand without graduating in Starting out with 60 members, all of whom were residing around the Witwatersrand, these young people set themselves the formidable task of transforming the ANC into a more radical mass movement.

Mandela soon impressed his peers by his disciplined work and consistent effort and was elected as the league's national secretary in Spurred on by the victory of the National Party, which won the all-white elections on the platform of apartheid, at the Annual Conference, the Programme of Action, inspired by the Youth League, which advocated the nelsons mandela biography best of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-cooperation, was accepted as official ANC policy.

The Defiance Campaign was conceived as a mass civil disobedience campaign that would snowball from a core of selected volunteers to involve more and more ordinary people, culminating in mass defiance. Fulfilling his responsibility as volunteer-in-chief, Mandela travelled the country, organising resistance to discriminatory legislation. Charged, with Moroka, Sisulu and 17 others, and brought to trial for his role in the campaign, the court found that Mandela and his co-accused had consistently advised their followers to adopt a peaceful course of action and to avoid all violence.

For his part in the Defiance Campaign, Mandela was convicted of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act and given a suspended prison sentence. Shortly after the campaign ended, he was also prohibited from attending gatherings and confined to Johannesburg for six months. In Decemberin partnership with Tambo, Mandela opened South Africa's first black law firm in central Johannesburg.

InMandela was given the responsibility to prepare a plan that would enable the leadership of the movement to maintain dynamic contact with its membership without recourse to public meetings.

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The objective was to prepare for the possibility that the ANC would, like the Communist Party, be declared illegal and to ensure that the organisation would be able to operate from underground. This was the M-Plan, named after him. During the early s, Mandela played an important part in leading the resistance to the Western Areas removals, and to the introduction of Bantu Education.

He also played a significant role in popularising the Freedom Charter, adopted by the Congress of the People in During the whole of the s, Mandela was the victim of various forms of repression. Mandela arrived on Robben Island in the winter of where he spent 18 of his 27 prison years to The South African government built a new maximum security building especially for political prisoners to keep them away from the general prison population because the security services believed that political prisoners would influence other prisoners.

At the prison, the prisoners were categorized from A to D, and due to his transgressions, Mandela was ranked D, which allowed him the least amount of privileges. He was allowed to send and receive one letter in six months and have only one visitor. Mandela eventually worked his way up the prison ranking system and was able to receive four visits a year, and his mother visited before her death in He and other political prisoners were assigned work at the Lime Quarry where they dug limestone.

The daily routine was to work eight hours a day breaking limestone slate boulders into stones used in paving roads. The work was strenuous and unsafe since the glare from the white rocks caused impairment to the eyes. Conditions were better here and he was allowed contact with his family. Due to the damp conditions at the jail, Mandela came down with tuberculosis in and as a result, he was admitted to the Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town and spent six weeks recuperating.

The following December, he was transferred to the Victor Verster Prison in Paarl, where he would stay for fourteen months before his release from prison in On February 11,after 27 years behind bars, Nelson Mandela emerged as a free man and his release promised a new chapter in South Africa. The president at the time, F. Mandela continued to immerse himself in politics, holding meetings and giving official talks and lectures.

Mandela and President de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in for their work towards abolishing apartheid. The ceremony was televised internationally and numerous people gathered to witness the inauguration speech. At the end of one term, Mandela gave his last address to the South African nation and retired from active politics in February As Thembu nelson mandela biography best, Mandela attended a Wesleyan mission school, the Clarkebury Boarding Institute and Wesleyan College, where, he would later state, he achieved academic success through "plain hard work.

He also excelled at track and boxing. Mandela was initially mocked as a "country boy" by his Wesleyan classmates, but eventually became friends with several students, including Mathona, his first female friend. InMandela enrolled at the University of Fort Harethe only residential center of higher learning for Black people in South Africa at the time.

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Fort Hare was considered Africa's equivalent of Harvarddrawing scholars from all parts of sub-Saharan Africa. In his first year at the university, Mandela took the required courses, but focused on Roman-Dutch law to prepare for a career in civil service as an interpreter or clerk — regarded as the best profession that a Black man could obtain at the time.

For some time, students had been dissatisfied with the food and lack of power held by the SRC. During this election, a majority of students voted to boycott unless their demands were met. Aligning with the student majority, Mandela resigned from his position. Seeing this as an act of insubordination, the university expelled Mandela for the rest of the year and gave him an ultimatum: He could return to the school if he agreed to serve on the SRC.

When Mandela returned home, the regent was furious, telling him unequivocally that he would have to recant his decision and go back to school in the fall. A few weeks after Mandela returned home, Regent Jongintaba announced that he had arranged a marriage for his adopted son. The regent wanted to make sure that Mandela's life was properly planned, and the arrangement was within his right, as tribal custom dictated.

Shocked by the news, feeling trapped and believing that he had no other option than to follow this recent order, Mandela ran away from home. He settled in Johannesburg, where he worked a variety of jobs, including as a guard and a clerk, while completing his bachelor's degree via correspondence courses. He then enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to study law.

Mandela soon became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress in Their goal was to transform the ANC into a mass grassroots movement, deriving strength from millions of rural peasants and working people who had no voice nelson mandela biography best the current regime. Specifically, the group believed that the ANC's old tactics of polite petitioning were ineffective.

Inthe ANC officially adopted the Youth League's methods of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-cooperation, with policy goals of full citizenship, redistribution of land, trade union rights, and free and compulsory education for all children. For 20 years, Mandela directed peaceful, nonviolent acts of defiance against the South African government and its racist policies, including the Defiance Campaign and the Congress of the People.

He founded the law firm Mandela and Tambo, partnering with Oliver Tamboa brilliant student he'd met while attending Fort Hare. The law firm provided free and low-cost legal counsel to unrepresented Black people. InMandela and others were arrested and charged with treason for their political advocacy they were eventually acquitted.

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Meanwhile, the ANC was being challenged by Africanists, a new breed of Black activists who believed that the pacifist method of the ANC was ineffective. Africanists soon broke away to form the Pan-Africanist Congress, which negatively affected the ANC; bythe movement had lost much of its militant support. Mandela was married three times and had six children.

He wed his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase, in The couple had four children together: Madiba Thembekile d. The couple divorced in InMandela wed Winnie Madikizela. The couple had two daughters together, Zenani Argentina's South African ambassador and Zindziswa the South African ambassador to Denmarkbefore separating in Two years later, inMandela married Graca Machel, the first Education Minister of Mozambique, with whom he remained until his death in Formerly committed to nonviolent protest, Mandela began to believe that armed struggle was the only way to achieve change.