Nelson Mandela becomes president

The story

The boy who “brought trouble”

Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in a village in southern Africa, Mvezo, into a family of the Xhosa people. His birth name was Rolihlahla, which in the Xhosa language means “pulling the branch of a tree”, and so, by extension, “troublemaker”. It was at school that a teacher gave him the English name Nelson. The boy grew up in the countryside, watching over the flocks and listening to the elders' tales of his people's struggles, and later studied to be a lawyer in Johannesburg, where he opened a law office with his friend Oliver Tambo.

In 1948 the South African government, made up only of white people, set up a system called apartheid, which means “separation” in the Afrikaans language. People were divided by skin colour: white, black, mixed-race and Asian. Black people, who were the great majority, could not vote, had to live in separate neighbourhoods and “homelands”, had worse schools and had to carry a pass to travel. Mandela joined the party that fought for their rights, the ANC, the African National Congress.

From protest to prison

At first the ANC protested peacefully. But on 21 March 1960, at Sharpeville, the police fired on a crowd of unarmed demonstrators and killed 69 people. The government banned the ANC. Mandela and others then decided to form an armed wing, which attacked mainly buildings and installations, without wanting to hurt people. In 1962 he was arrested and, at the Rivonia Trial in 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. In front of the judges he declared that his ideal was a free society in which everyone lived in harmony and with equal opportunities, an ideal for which he was prepared to die.

He spent twenty-seven years in prison, most of them on Robben Island, off Cape Town, in a small cell, working to break stones in a limestone quarry. He could receive one letter and one visit only every six months. But even in prison he went on studying and persuading the other prisoners, and even some of the guards. Meanwhile, outside, the world began to demand his release: singers and students organised concerts and protests, and many countries imposed economic sanctions on South Africa.

Freedom

At the end of the 1980s the government realised that apartheid could not last. The new president, Frederik de Klerk, lifted the ban on the ANC and, on 11 February 1990, freed Mandela, who was 71. Television stations all over the world broadcast his walk out of prison live, with his hand raised in greeting. Mandela worked with de Klerk to negotiate the end of apartheid and a new constitution, despite the tensions and violence of those years. For this the two men shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

On 27 April 1994 South Africa held its first free elections for all citizens, regardless of colour. People queued in very long lines, sometimes for many hours, to vote for the first time in their lives. The ANC won with about 62% of the votes and, on 10 May, Mandela, aged 75, was sworn in as the country's first black president, in front of leaders from all over the world.

Forgiving in order to build

Mandela did not seek revenge. He created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, before which people who had committed crimes during apartheid could tell the truth and ask for forgiveness. In 1995 South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup, a sport loved above all by white people: Mandela, by arriving at the stadium wearing the Springboks shirt, managed to get the team cheered by black people too. In 1999, after a single term, he retired. He died on 5 December 2013, aged 95.