“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
Nelson Mandela
Rolihlahla Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in the Madiba clan of the Xhosa ethnic group, in the small village of Mvezo in the Transkei region. His father was the chief counselor of the king of the Thembu people. His mother was the third of four wives, and Rolihlahla grew up in a large, caring family of half brothers and cousins, listening to stories of the elders about the value of their ancestors during the wars of resistance, dreaming of his own contribution to the struggle for the freedom of his people.
Xhosa children were instructed to learn through imitation and emulation, questions were considered a nuisance, and adults conveyed only the information they felt they needed. Thus, Mandela acquired knowledge mainly through observation. At age seven, he was the first family member to attend school, where he received the English name “Nelson”, according to the custom of giving “Christian names” to all school-age children. His father died shortly thereafter.
In 1936, he was sent to Healdtown where he was taught a Eurocentric curriculum focused on British history and, for the first time, he became aware of the contradiction between Christian values and its tolerance and even the support for the racist colonial system. He started his undergraduate degree in Arts at Fort Hare University, but he was expelled for taking part in a student protest against university policies, completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of South Africa.
In Johannesburg, he worked as a mine security officer and began his law studies, but left the University of the Witwatersrand in 1948 without graduating. He resumed his studies through the University of London, but also did not complete the degree, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Law only in 1989, through the University of South Africa, by correspondence in the last months of prison.
Mandela’s political involvement began in 1942, joining the African National Congress (ANC) two years later, when he helped form the Young League Party. It was also in 1944 the year of his marriage to nurse Evelyn Mase, with whom he had four children in an eleven-year relationship (they separated in 1955 and divorced in 1958, due to Mandela’s political involvement).
With growing political involvement, Mandela rose hierarchically within the ANC. After the Afrikaners’ 1948 electoral victory and the establishment of the segregationist apartheid regime, which denied South African blacks political, social and economic rights, he radicalized political militancy and led a campaign of civil disobedience, helping to consolidate resistance to the Regime through a mass movement, the Program of Action.
In 1952, he opened with his friend Oliver Tambo the first black law firm, “Mandela & Tambo”. It was also the year of the beginning of the Challenge Campaign, of which Mandela was a spokesman, inviting blacks to civil disobedience. He was arrested several times, until he was sentenced on the basis of the Communist Repression Law to nine months of forced labor, suspended for two years. At the end of 1952, he was banned for the first time, being forbidden to participate in political activities.
In 1954, the ANC created the People’s Congress to bring together the victims of apartheid, and during a meeting in the following year the Freedom Charter was published, a document containing a program for the anti-segregationist cause. Mandela was still forbidden to move, but managed to secretly follow up the meeting.
In 1955, he was arrested again, taken to the Treason Trial. In 1958, he married the social worker Winnie Madikizela, with whom he had two daughters and divorced in 1996.
In 1960, South African police killed 69 unarmed protesters during a protest in Sharpeville against passing laws, taking the country to the state of emergency and banning the ANC. Mandela was among the thousands detained during the state of emergency, but was acquitted in the Trial of Treason in 1961.
The Sharpeville massacre made Mandela relinquish his commitment to only non-violent acts. As soon as he was amnestied at the trial, he went into hiding and began planning a national strike, becoming commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the armed wing of the ANC.
In 1962, using the name David Motsamayi, he managed to leave South Africa and travel across the African continent and to England in search of support for the armed struggle. He received military training in Morocco and Ethiopia, returning to his homeland six months later. As soon as he returned, he was sentenced to five years in prison for traveling illegally abroad and inciting strikes.
In 1963, he was tried for sabotage at the Rivonia Trial. Faced with the possibility of the death penalty, his speech in April 1964 became immortalized: “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” In June 1964, he was classified as a terrorist by the South African government and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mandela spent almost three decades in jail, always refusing to compromise his political position in exchange for freedom with the review of the sentence. He has become a powerful symbol of resistance and struggle for human rights, reaching anti-apartheid campaigns in several countries through the cry “Free Nelson Mandela.”
With the ANC campaign and international pressure, he was released in February 1990, at age 72, by order of President Frederik Willem de Klerk, with whom Mandela shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.
After the end of apartheid, he was elected the first black president of South Africa, ruling from May 1994 to June 1999 and successfully conducted the peaceful and democratic reunification of a country shattered by racism. True to his promise, he left office after a term as president, turning to causes of various social and human rights organizations. He continued working with the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
At the age of 80, he married again with the Nansen Refugee Award of 1995, the Mozambican Graça Machel. He officially retired from public life in 2004, at age 85.
He was honored with about 250 awards. Despite the most terrible provocations and deprivations, Mandela never responded to racism with the same action and he knew how to forgive those who did him harm, being an inspiration to all the oppressed and those who are opposed to oppression.
Sources: UOL, Nelson Mandela, PSD e Sa History.
