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Nelson Mandela Was Born

In 1918, a boy was born in a remote South African village. His father was a top counselor to the tribal chiefs; his mother was the third of his fathers four wives. She named the baby Rolihlhala, which meant troublemaker. The young mother had no idea how prophetic her choice of name would be.

The village had no roads or running water. The boys father died when he was just nine years old. He was adopted by a high-ranking tribal chief and left his village to be raised as tribal royalty. He was provided with a comfortable life and was the first of his family to receive an education.

But in South Africa, even the trappings of royalty were limited for black people, because the native Africans, the overwhelming majority of the population, were forced to live under the brutally oppressive government of a white minority that had colonized their country

They were limited in what jobs they could hold, what schools they could attend, and were forced to live in crowded ghettoes known as townships while the whites claimed most of the land.

Rolihlhala was a bright and talented student, but by the time he reached university, he could no longer tolerate the injustice being perpetrated upon his people. In his first act of political defiance, he resigned from a student faculty committee to side with protesting students. He was suspended and sent home.

The chief ordered him to return to school, and also informed him that a marriage had been arranged for him. So, he ran away to the city of Johannesburg and continued his education on his own. He became part of the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress, a group dedicated to freeing black South Africans from apartheid.

Early in his life, a schoolteacher had changed Rolihlalas name to Nelson. For the next 20 years, Nelson Mandela and the ANC lead a grassroots movement for freedom and equality. Although their tactics were not violent, the group took a hard stand through demonstrations, boycotts, labor strikes, civil disobedience and a refusal to obey or acknowledge unfair government policies.

The ANC wanted free and mandatory education for all children; full citizenship and voting rights for black South Africans and land redistributed fairly. Mandela had become a lawyer, and formed a law firm with his good friend and fellow civil rights advocate, Oliver Tambo, to help poor black South Africans.

By the 1960s, after decades of futile struggle, Mandela began to believe in the younger generations call to take up arms, and he formed a militant branch of the ANC. He was arrested several times, and in 1964, he and other political dissidents were sentenced and sent to jail.

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison. Mandelas imprisonment became a symbol of the captivity that South African blacks lived in under apartheid.

In 1990, due to intense and mounting international political pressure, South Africa freed Nelson Mandela from prison. Mandela was now a political force, and he and South Africas president, F. W. De Klerk, negotiated the end of apartheid.

In 1994, South Africa held its first democratic elections, and Nelson Mandela, age 77, was elected South Africas first black president. De Klerk was now his deputy, and the two men received the Nobel peace prize for ending apartheid.

Nelson Mandela decided not to seek a second term in office in order to pursue humanitarian causes. In 2004, he retired completely from public life, returning to live in his native village of Qunu.

New York Post, July 18, 2011
Written by: Robin Wallace

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