His story is one of the most remarkable of any world leader. Few in history have endured oppression with such little rancor or overcome the oppressor with such little bloodshed.
I, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, do hereby swear to be faithful to the republic of South Africa.
In May, 1994, Nelson Mandela, the man white South Africa had imprisoned for nearly 30 years was sworn in as the country's first black president. Through his dignified and courageous leadership, the African national congress hadn't broken the stronghold of apartheid and transformed South Africa into a multiracial democracy.
Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 in South Africa's Eastern Cape. He was the son of a tribal chief. He qualified as a lawyer, and by 1952 he'd set up a legal partnership with a man who was to be a lifelong friend and ally, Oliver Tambo.
Together they campaigned against apartheid, the exercise in social engineering in which South Africa's white minority, in charge of the country's military as well as economic forces, brutally crushed the human rights and inspirations of the black majority. In 1956, Mandela was among 156 political activists to be charged with high treason. The trial lasted for more than 4 years before charges were dropped.
In Johannesburg, premier city of South Africa, thousands of colored people went to attend a protest meeting called by the African national congress.
By now, black resistance to apartheid was growing. Past laws which restricted where black people could live and work became the focus of resentment. Past books were burned as Mandela and others organized demonstrations against apartheid's leaders.
I despised them because they were despised by the entire world. They dressed in beautiful suits, silk shirts and silk ties, but they were beautiful outside and full of evil inside.
The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 forced the ANC to change strategy. Sixty nine people died when police opened fire on black demonstrators. The ANC was outlawed, Mandela went underground, and peaceful resistance became a thing of the past.
There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and nonviolence against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenseless people.
Mandela undertook a campaign of sabotage against the state. He was eventually arrested and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government. At his trial, he made a three hour speech from the dock. A tape of it was discovered later. This, his final plea for freedom and democracy was to echo down the 27 years he was to remain a political prisoner.
It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was sent to Robin island, a top security prison in Cape Town's Table Bay. Photographs of Mandela were banned from publication. To quote him was an offense. But, astonishingly, he wasn't embittered by his long imprisonment.
We soon, uh, grasped the fact that we are not ??? the struggle against individual whites. We are fighting a principle, we are fighting white domination, and in the course of that struggle, we can inform friendships with people from the other side.
Outside, time was running out for apartheid, with ANC leadership in jail, even the children of Soweto were now helping to sustain the revolution. The hard line government of P.W. Botha tried to crush the uprising, but gradually more liberal white people began to recognize that Mandela was the solution, not the problem. An international campaign was begun for the release of Nelson Mandela, as around the world, governments imposed sanctions on South Africa. In 1990, a courageous white leader, president F.W. de Clerk announced that the ANC would be un-banned. That February, after 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela walked to freedom with his then wife Winnie at his side. World-wide pressure had born fruit. But hope soon turned to despair. Township violence left blacks fighting blacks. Mandela repeatedly appealed for peace.
Take your guns, your knives, and your pangas, and throw them into the sea.
Mandela's appeal was largely ignored. Black people were massacring each other, even as Mandela was negotiating a new, democratic constitution. The country's first multi-racial elections in 1994 resulted in a landslide victory for the ANC. Millions enjoyed their first taste of democracy. People from all races welcomed the vote as a new beginning for the country. The process of national reconciliation was helped by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which gave the victims of apartheid the opportunity to tell their stories, and in some cases to confront their oppressors.
What kind of man, listening to those moans and cries and groans, what kind of man is that?
It was a painful process for everyone. Yet for all his political skills, Mandela found it difficult to tackle many of South Africa's endemic social problems, chief among them with the acute shortage of affordable housing, the widespread poverty, and the scourge of AIDS.
In December 1997, Nelson Mandela gave up the presidency of the African National Congress in favor of South Africa's vice president, Thabo Mbeki, who also succeeded him as head of state. Mandela was feted throughout the world, as here in London. But there'd been personal sadness. His long time marriage to Winnie, once known as the mother of the nation, had ended following her involvement in the kidnapping and murder of a student activist. In 1998, at the age of 80, he married Graca Machele, the widow of the late president of Mozambique. It was a marriage which brought him personal happiness and helped him to enjoy the family life which had been denied to him by his long commitment to the struggle against apartheid.
On the Eve of the new millennium, Nelson Mandela had revisited the cell on Robben Island where he'd spent 18 of the 27 he was imprisoned. He lit a candle to symbolize reconciliation. It was passed to an African child to represent that continent's hope for the future, a hope inspired by the life and ideals of one of the truly great leaders of our time, Nelson Mandela.
