President of South Africa:

Nelson Mandela 

Main Life Accomplishments:

He is a former President of South Africa, the first to be elected in fully representative democratic elections. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe. He spent 27 years in prison, much of it on Robben Island, on convictions for crimes that included sabotage committed while he spearheaded the struggle against apartheid.

Basics:

Born: 18 July 1918, Mvezo, Eastern Cape, Union of South Africa

Died:  

Nationality:  South African

Religion: Christian

Fields: Politics, Military

Main Accomplishments: 

Chronology of Life Events:

1918 July 18

Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela is born a member of the Madiba clan. His tribal name, "Rolihalah," means "troublemaker." He is later given his English name, Nelson, by a teacher at his school

 

1919 

His father is dispossessed of his land and money on the orders of a white magistrate

 

1927

His father dies. The acting chief of the Thembu clan, Jongintaba Dalindyebo becomes his guardian and ensures he receives an excellent education

 

1937

Moves to Healdtown attending the Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort.

Fort Hare University: Studied for a B.A. and met his lifelong friend Oliver Tambo

 

1939 

Asked to leave Fort Hare due to his involvement in a boycott of the Students' Representative Council against the university policies

 

Moves to Johannesburg to escape an arranged marriage and experiences the system of apartheid which forbade the black population to vote, travel without permission or own land

 

Worked as a guard at a mine and then clerk at a law firm

 

Completed his degree via a correspondence course at the University of South Africa

 

Studies Law at the University of Witwatersrand whilst living in Alexandra

 

1943

Joins the African National Congress (ANC) as an activist.

 

1944

Forms the Youth League of the ANC with Oliver Tambo and Walter Sislu

 

1948

South African government (Afrikaner-dominated National Party) limits the freedom of black Africans even more when the apartheid policy of racial segregation is introduced across the country

 

1952 

Opens the first black legal firm in South Africa with fellow lawyer Oliver Tambo providing free or low-cost legal counsel to many blacks who would otherwise have been without legal representation.

 

Mandela was prominent in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign

 

1955 

Freedom Charter adopted at the Congress of the People calling for equal rights and a program of the anti-apartheid cause

 

1956

December 5: Accused of conspiring to overthrow the South African state by violent means with 155 other political activists and charged with high treason. The Treason Trial of 1956–61 follows and all were acquitted

 

1957 

His marriage of 13 years to his first wife Evelyn Ntoko Mase breaks up

 

1958

Marries Nomzamo "Winnie" Madikizela, a social worker, and the couple have two children. Their marriage ended in separation in April 1992 and divorce in March 1996

 

1959 

Parliament passes new laws extending racial segregation by creating separate homelands for major black groups in South Africa

 

The ANC loses most of its financial and militant support when members break away to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) under Potlako Leballo and Robert Sobukwe

 

1960

Sharpeville Massacre: Police kill 69 peaceful protestors and the ANC is banned

 

Mandela goes into hiding and forms an underground military group with armed resistance

 

1961

Issues a call to arms and becomes the ANC leader of the newly formed Umkhontoat guerrilla movement at the All-In African Conference

 

1962 August 5

Arrested after living on the run for seventeen months and was imprisoned in the Johannesburg Fort.

 

25 October 

Nelson Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison but again goes on the run

 

1964 June 12

Captured and convicted of sabotage and treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 46, initially on Robben island where he would be kept for 18 years

 

1965 

Rhodesia gains its independence and only whites are represented in the new government

 

1968

His mother dies and his eldest son is killed in a car crash but he not allowed to attend either of the funerals

 

1974

Rhodesia expelled from united nations due to the policy of apartheid

 

1976

Over 600 students killed in protests at Soweto and Sharpeville

 

1977

Steve Biko, the leader of the protests, is killed whilst in police custody.

 

1980 

The exiled Oliver Tambo launches an international campaign for the release of his friend

 

Zimbabwe gains its independence

 

1983

The government allows farmers to re-arm and protect themselves from black dissidents.

 

1984

Government sources state that declared that since 1983 black dissidents have murdered 120, mutilated 25, raped 47 and committed 284 robberies

 

1986

Sanctions against South Africa tightened costing millions in revenue

 

1988 

Amnesty is announced for all dissidents - 122 surrender.

 

1990 February 11

Nelson Mandela is released from prison after 27 years

 

President De Klerk lifts the ban on the African National Congress (ANC)

 

The ANC and the white National Party begin talks on forming a multi-racial democracy for South Africa.

 

1991 

Becomes President of the African National Congress ( ANC )

 

The International Olympics Committee lift a 21 year ban on South African athletes competing in the Olympic Games.

 

1992 April

Separates from Winnie Mandela after she is convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to assault.

 

1993 March

Divorces Winnie Mandela

 

Nelson Mandela and Mr de Klerk are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

 

1994 April 26

Free Elections where black South Africans are allowed to vote for the first time. Nelson Mandela runs for President

 

The ANC won 252 of the 400 seats in the national assembly

 

May

Inaugurated as the first black president of South Africa. He appoints de Klerk as deputy president and forms as racially mixed Government of National Unity.

 

1995

South Africa hosts the 1995 Rugby World Cup and South Africa wins. Nelson Mandela wears a Springbok shirt when he presents the trophy to Afrikaner captain Francois Pienaar. This gesture was seen as a major step in the reconciliation of white and black South Africans.

 

1998

Marries Graca Machel, the widow of the former president of Mozambique, on his 80th birthday.

 

Tour of Canada

 

1999 

Relinquishes presidency in favor of Thabo Mbeki, who was nominated ANC president in 1997.

 

Toured the world as a global statesman

 

2000 

Appointed as mediator in the civil war in Burundi

 

2001 

Nelson Mandela was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer with radiation

 

Made an honorary Canadian citizen

 

2003

Attacked the foreign policy of the George W. Bush

 

Later that same year, he lent his support to the 46664 AIDS fundraising campaign. The initiative was named after his prison number

 

2004 June
Nelson Mandela announced that he would be retiring from public life at the age of 85

 

July

Flew to Bangkok to speak at the XV International AIDS Conference.

 

23 July

Johannesburg bestowed its highest honour by granting Nelson Mandela the freedom of the city

 

2005 6 January

His son, Makgatho Mandela died of AIDS

Early Life:

Mandela belongs to a cadet branch of the Thembu dynasty which (nominally) reigned in the Transkeian Territories of the Union of South Africa's Cape Province. He was born in the small village of Mvezo in the district of Umtata, the Transkei capital. His great-grandfather was Ngubengcuka (died 1832), the Inkosi Enkhulu or King of the Thembu people, who were eventually subjected to British colonial rule. One of the king's sons, named Mandela, became Nelson's grandfather and the source of his surname. However, being only the Inkosi's child by a wife of the Ixhiba clan (the so-called "Left-Hand House"), the descendants of his branch of the royal family were not eligible to succeed to the Thembu throne. His father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (1880–1928), was nonetheless designated chief of the town of Mvezo. Upon alienating the colonial authorities, however, he was deprived of his position, and moved his family to Qunu. Gadla remained, however, a member of the Inkosi's Privy Council, and was instrumental in the ascension to the Thembu throne of Jongintaba Dalindyebo, who would later return this favour by informally adopting Mandela upon Gadla's death. Mandela's father had four wives, with whom he fathered a total of thirteen children (four boys and nine girls). Mandela was born to Gadla's third wife ('third' by a complex royal ranking system), Nosekeni Fanny, daughter of Nkedama of the Mpemvu Xhosa clan, the dynastic Right Hand House, in whose umzi or homestead Mandela spent much of his childhood. His given name Rolihlahla means "to pull a branch of a tree", or more colloquially, "troublemaker".

 

Rolihlahla Mandela became the first member of his family to attend a school, and was given the English name "Nelson" by a teacher.

 

His father died of tuberculosis when Rolihlahla was nine, and the regent, Jongintaba, became his guardian. Mandela attended a Wesleyan mission school next door to the palace of the regent. Following Thembu custom, he was initiated at age sixteen, and attended Clarkebury Boarding Institute. He completed his Junior Certificate in two years, instead of the usual three. Destined to inherit his father's position as a privy councillor, in 1937 Mandela moved to Healdtown, the Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort which most Thembu royalty attended. Aged nineteen, he took an interest in boxing and running.

 

After matriculating, he started to study for a B.A. at the Fort Hare University, where he met Oliver Tambo, and the two became lifelong friends and colleagues. He also became close friends with his kinsman, Kaiser ("K.D.") Matanzima who, however, as royal scion of the Thembu Right Hand House, was destined for the throne of Transkei, a role that later led him to embrace Bantustan policies which made him and Mandela political enemies. At the end of Nelson's first year, he became involved in a boycott by the Students' Representative Council against the university policies, and was told to leave Fort Hare and not return unless he accepted his election to the SRC.

 

Later, while imprisoned, Mandela studied for a Bachelor of Laws from the University of London External Programme.

 

Shortly after leaving Fort Hare, Jongintaba announced to Mandela and Justice (the regent's son and heir to the throne) that he had arranged marriages for both of them. Both young men were displeased by this and rather than marry, they elected to flee the comforts of the regent's estate to go to Johannesburg. Upon his arrival, Mandela initially found employment as a guard at a mine. However, this was quickly terminated after the employer learned that Mandela was the Regent's runaway adopted son. He later started work as an articled clerk at a law firm thanks to connections with his friend and mentor, realtor Walter Sisulu. While working there, he completed his B.A. degree at the University of South Africa via correspondence, after which he started with his law studies at the University of Witwatersrand, where he first befriended fellow students and future anti-apartheid political activists Joe Slovo, Harry Schwarz and Ruth First. During this time Mandela lived in Alexandra township, north of Johannesburg.

 

Wife Background:

First marriage

 

Mandela's first marriage was to Evelyn Ntoko Mase who, like Mandela, was also from what later became the Transkei area of South Africa, although they actually met in Johannesburg. The couple had two sons, Madiba Thembekile (Thembi) (born 1946) and Makgatho Lewanika (born 1950), and two daughters, both named Makaziwe (known as Maki; born 1947 and 1953). Their first daughter died aged nine months, and they named their second daughter in her honour.

 

The couple broke up in 1957 after 13 years, divorcing under the multiple strains of his constant absences, devotion to revolutionary agitation, and the fact she was a Jehovah's Witness, a religion which requires political neutrality.

 

Thembi was killed in a car crash in 1969 at the age of 25, while Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island. All their children were educated at the Waterford Kamhlaba.

 

Evelyn Mase died in 2004.

 

Second marriage

 

Mandela's second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also came from the Transkei area, although they, too, met in Johannesburg, where she was the city's first black social worker. They had two daughters, Zenani (Zeni), born 4 February 1958, and Zindziswa (Zindzi), born 1960. Later, Winnie would be deeply torn by family discord which mirrored the country's political strife; while her husband was serving a life sentence on the Robben Island prison, her father became the agriculture minister in the Transkei. The marriage ended in separation (April 1992) and divorce (March 1996), fuelled by political estrangement.

 

Mandela still languished in prison when his daughter Zenani was married to Prince Thumbumuzi Dlamini in 1973, elder brother of King Mswati III of Swaziland. As a member by marriage of a reigning foreign dynasty, she was able to visit her father during his South African imprisonment while other family members were denied access. The Dlamini couple live and run a business in Boston. One of their sons, Prince Cedza Dlamini (born 1976), educated in the United States, has followed in his grandfather's footsteps as an international advocate for human rights and humanitarian aid. Thumbumuzi and Mswati's sister, Princess Mantfombi Dlamini, is the chief consort to King Goodwill Zwelithini of KwaZulu-Natal, who "reigns but does not rule" over South Africa's largest ethnic group under the auspices of South Africa's government. One of Queen Mantfombi's sons is expected to eventually succeed Goodwill as monarch of the Zulus, whose Inkatha Party leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, was one of the political rivals of Mandela, before and during his presidency.

 

Third marriage

 

Mandela remarried, once again, in 1998 on his 80th birthday, to Graça Machel née Simbine, widow of Samora Machel, the former Mozambican president and ANC ally who was killed in an air crash 12 years earlier. The wedding followed months of international negotiations to set the unprecedented bride-price to be remitted to Machel's clan. Said negotiations were conducted on Mandela's behalf by his traditional sovereign, King Buyelekhaya Zwelibanzi Dalindyebo, born 1964. The paramount chief's grandfather was the regent Jongintaba Dalindyebo. Chief Jongintaba had arranged a marriage for Mandela, from which he fled to Johannesburg in 1940.

 

Mandela still maintains a home at Qunu in the realm of his royal nephew (second cousin thrice-removed in Western reckoning), whose university expenses he defrayed and whose privy councillor he remains.

 

Father Background:

Nelson Mandela's father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was the chief "by blood and custom" of Mvezo, a position confirmed by the paramount chief of the Thembu, Jongintaba Dalindyebo. 

 

Mother Background:

His mother, Nonqaphi Nosekeni Mandela, is the junior of 4 wives of Henry Mgadla Mandela. Neither ever attended school. Dies of a heart attack.

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