... was born on 18 July 1918 in the village of Mvezo, in Cape Province. His parents named him Rolihlahla, which is a colloquial term meaning "troublemaker". He was given the name Nelson by a schoolteacher; it was common practice for schoolteachers to give their native pupils Christian names. (You surely have to sympathise with a European teacher – if that's what he or she was – faced with a class of children with names like Rolihlahla.)
Mandela was not noted for his diligence as a student, but he did obtain a BA degree in 1943 through the University of South Africa. He became involved in politics around 1942, and joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944. He helped to form the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), and rose through its ranks. The Youth League was instrumental in the ANC's adoption of a more radical policy (the 'Programme of Action') in 1949.
In 1952 he was chosen to lead a campaign of civil disobedience against six unjust laws – a joint programme between the ANC and the South African Indian Congress. Mandela and 19 others were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for their part in the campaign, and sentenced to nine months of hard labour, suspended for two years.
A two–year diploma in law, on top of his BA degree, allowed Mandela to practise law. In August 1952 he and Oliver Tambo established South Africa's first black law firm: Mandela & Tambo.
In December 1955 Mandela was arrested in a countrywide police swoop that led to the so–called Treason Trial. Men and women of all races found themselves in the dock in the marathon trial, which lasted for almost five years.
On 21 March 1960, police killed 69 unarmed people in a protest against the pass laws (a form of internal passport system, designed to segregate the population, manage urbanisation, and allocate migrant labour) in the township of Sharpeville, in the Transvaal. This led to the country's first state of emergency, and the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Mandela and his co–defendants in the Treason Trial were among thousands detained.
Days before the end of the Treason Trial, Mandela travelled to Pietermaritzburg to speak at the All–in Africa Conference, which resolved that he should write to Prime Minister Verwoerd requesting a national convention on a non–racial constitution, and to warn that should he not agree there would be a national strike against South Africa becoming a republic.
The Treason Trial finally ended on 29 March 1961 with the acquittal of the last 28 accused, including Mandela. Mandela then went underground and began planning a national strike, but the strike was called off in the face of a massive mobilisation of state security.
In June 1961 Mandela was asked to lead the armed struggle, and helped to establish Umkhonto weSizwe ('Spear of the Nation', abbreviated as 'MK') – which was launched on 16 December 1961 with a series of explosions.
MK was effectively the militant wing of the African National Congress (ANC). It planned to carry out acts of sabotage that would exert maximum pressure on the government of South Africa with minimum casualties; they sought to bomb military installations, power plants, telephone lines, and transport links at night, when there were no civilians present. Mandela stated that they chose sabotage because it was the least harmful action, did not involve killing, and offered the best hope for racial reconciliation afterwards; he nevertheless acknowledged that should this have failed then guerrilla warfare might have been necessary.
On 11 January 1962, Mandela secretly left South Africa. He travelled around Africa and visited England, to gain support for the armed struggle. He received military training in Morocco and Ethiopia, and returned to South Africa in July. He was arrested in a police roadblock on 5 August 1962, and charged with inciting workers' strikes and leaving the country without permission. He was found guilty and sentenced to five years' imprisonment.
In July 1963, police raided Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, a district of Johannesburg – one of the places where Mandela had hidden prior to his arrest. There they found paperwork documenting MK's activities, some of which mentioned Mandela. At the so–called Rivonia Trial, which began in Pretoria in October, Mandela and five others were charged with four counts of sabotage and conspiracy to violently overthrow the government.
Mandela and two others were found guilty of all four charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. The words that concluded his famous speech from the dock, on 20 April 1964, became immortalised:
"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."
Mandela and his comrades spent the next 18 years on Robben Island, where they were sent to work in a lime quarry. In the evenings Mandela studied for a law degree from the University of London.
In April 1982, Mandela and four senior ANC leaders were transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Tokai, a suburb of Cape Town, where conditions were better than at Robben Island. They believed that they were being isolated in order to remove their influence on younger activists at Robben Island.
Mandela's 70th birthday in July 1988 attracted international attention, including a tribute concert at Wembley Stadium that was televised and watched by an estimated 200 million viewers worldwide. In August 1988 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which has often been blamed on the poor conditions in his various prison cells. Four months later he was moved to Victor Verster Prison, near Paarl in Western Cape province. He was housed in the relative comfort of a warder's house, with a personal cook, and used the time to complete his LLB degree.
In July 1989, Mandela was surprised to be invited to tea with President P. W. Botha. Shortly afterwards Botha suffered a stroke, and was succeeded as President by F. W. de Klerk. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, de Klerk considered legalising the ANC and freeing Mandela. Although some members of his cabinet were deeply opposed to his plans, de Klerk met with Mandela in December. In February 1990 he legalised all formerly banned political parties and announced Mandela's unconditional release.
Following his release on 11 February 1990, Mandela immersed himself in official talks to end white minority rule. In 1991 he was elected to succeed his ailing friend Oliver Tambo as President of the ANC. In 1993 he and President de Klerk jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize; and on 27 April 1994, at the age of 75, Nelson Mandela voted for the first time in his life.
On 10 May 1994 he was inaugurated as South Africa's first democratically elected President. In 1998, on his 80th birthday, he married Graça Machel – his third wife.
Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one term as President, as he had always said he would. He continued to champion peace and social justice, in his own nation and around the world: raising money through the Nelson Mandela Foundation to build schools and clinics in South Africa's rural heartland, and serving as a mediator in Burundi's civil war.
In June 2004, at the age of 85, he announced his formal retirement from public life and returned to his native village of Qunu. He made his last public appearance in 2010, at the final match of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. For the last three years of his life he suffered from increasingly poor health; he died at his home in Johannesburg on 5 December 2013, aged 95.
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