Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 — 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and philanthropist who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first head of state elected in a fully representative democratic election.^[1]

Early life

Mandela was born in the village of Mvezo in the Cape Province. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand, before opening, with Oliver Tambo, the country's first Black-owned law firm in Johannesburg in 1952.

Anti-apartheid struggle

Mandela became increasingly involved with the African National Congress (ANC) and, after the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing. He was arrested in 1962 and, in 1964, sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial. He spent twenty-seven years in prison, much of it on Robben Island.

Presidency

Released in 1990, Mandela led negotiations with President F. W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid. The two shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. In the 1994 general election — South Africa's first multiracial democratic vote — the ANC won by a landslide, and Mandela was inaugurated as president on 10 May 1994. He served a single term and retired from active politics in 1999.^[2]