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Fulbright Association
1100 G Street, N.W.
Suite 525
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: (202) 347-5543
Fax: (202) 347-6540 |
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Biography of Nelson Mandela |
| Born on July 18, 1918, Nelson R. Mandela enrolled in 1939 at Fort Hare
University College, one of the few places in South Africa where Africans could
pursue university education. He was expelled in his third year for organizing a
student boycott of the Student Representative Council after the authorities had
deprived it of its powers. |
| In 1940 Mr. Mandela went to Johannesburg to complete his studies at the
University of the Witwatwersrand, where he earned a law degree. He stayed in
Alexandra township amid the poverty, overcrowding, exclusion, and harassment
that Africans faced in South Africa; he worked in the mines, there too living in
appalling conditions with other migrant workers. |
| In 1944 Mr. Mandela joined the African National Congress, working to found its
Youth League, dedicated to mass action based on strikes, boycotts, and civil
disobedience. In 1949, one year after the white National Party was voted into
power by an almost exclusively white electorate on a policy of consolidating and
extending apartheid, the ANC adopted a program of action along such lines.
Two years later the ANC brought democratic organizations together to form the
Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws. Mr. Mandela was appointed
volunteer-in-chief and was among 3,500 people arrested for deliberately breaking
laws enforcing segregation. He received a nine-month suspended sentence.
In 1952 Mr. Mandela set up his legal practice in Johannesburg in partnership
with Oliver Tambo, then ANC national chairman, defying authorities by refusing
to move offices from the city center to a black township. The government banned
Mr. Mandela and 51 other people in 1952; although that order expired in 1953, he
was banned for the second time after opposing forced removals from Sophiatown
and Western Areas in South Africa. The Transvaal Law Society petitioned the
Supreme Court in 1954 to strike Mr. Mandela from the attorneys' roll because of
his involvement in the defiance campaign. |
| Mr. Mandela was still banned in 1955 when the Congress of the People brought
3,000 delegates from all over the county to consider the Freedom Charter,
adopted by unanimous acclamation. Mr. Mandela was among 156 people associated
with the Congress of the People who were arrested on December 5, 1956, and
charged with treason. When the trial ended in early 1961, South Africa was
about to become a republic ruled by the white minority and based on apartheid.
Mr. Mandela, under successive banning orders for nine years, delivered the main
speech at a conference attended by 1,400 African delegates, when the most recent
ban on him had not been immediately renewed. The conference elected a national
action committee to press for a national convention to decide South Africa's
future democratically. |
| In 1961 Mr. Mandela and others set up an armed wing of the ANC to press for
change through acts of sabotage strictly targeted at installations and not
people. Mr. Mandela was forced underground in a fresh round of arrests and
traveled secretly throughout the country and abroad. He was captured in
Harwick, Natal, on August 5, 1962. To prevent publication or quotation of his
words, he was banned while in prison. In November 1962 he was sentenced to five
years hard labor, having been charged with inciting Africans in 1961 and leaving
the country without valid travel documents. He was imprisoned on Robben Island.
In 1963 Mr. Mandela was brought from prison to stand trial with other ANC
leaders on charges of sabotage and attempted overthrow of the government. They
were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Although Mr. Mandela faced
brutal conditions in prison and his family was subjected to severe harassment,
he managed to smuggle notes from prison encouraging the struggle against
injustice. |
| In 1985, faced with the widespread resistance which prompted it to declare the
state of emergency, the South African government offered to release Mr. Mandela
on the condition that he renounce his commitment to the ANC's armed struggle.
He had rejected previous offers made on the condition that he live in the
Transkei bantustan. In 1989 he met State President P.W. Botha, and later met
F.W. de Klerk, Mr. Botha's successor. |
On February 11, 1990, Mr. Mandela was freed unconditionally. In July 1991, at
the first national conference since the party was banned in 1960, Mr. Mandela
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