Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela . (Mvezo, Union of South Africa , July 18 , 1918 Johannesburg , South Africa December 5 , 2013 ). Known in his country as Madiba , an honorary title conferred by the elders of the Mandela clan, he was the first president of South Africa to be democratically elected by universal suffrage.
In 1962 he was arrested and later sentenced for sabotage, in addition to other charges, to life imprisonment. He served 27 years in jail, most of which he was confined in Robben Island Prison . After his release on 11 as February as 1990 , Mandela led his party in the negotiations for a multiracial democracy in South Africa, which was achieved in 1994 . Mandela won the elections and was president from 1994 to 1999 . I received over 250 international awards over four decades, including in 1993 the Nobel Prize for Peace .
Great friend of Cuba and of Fidel Castro . In 1991 , after his release, he visited the island and in a speech, the 26 of July of 1991 in Matanzas , thanked the solidarity and support of Cuba to Africa for decades and its contribution to the policy of the Apartheid in Africa of the South .
Biographical synthesis
He was born on 18 of July of 1918 in Mvezo , a village on the banks of the Mbashe River in the district of Umtata , the capital of the region of Transkei , now part of the Province of the Eastern Cape . Belonging to the Madiba clan of the Xhosa ethnic group and one of the thirteen children born with one of his four wives by a main counselor of the Thembu Royal House , in turn grandson of the king ( Ngubengcuka , died in 1832 ) although without dynastic rights.
The father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (cited in some sources as Henry Mgadla Mandela), served as local chief in Mvezo before being dismissed by the South African Union government , after which he moved with his large family to a nearby village, Qunu , where in 1928 he died at the age of 48 a victim of tuberculosis . The mother, Nonqaphi Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of Mphakanyiswa’s wives.
An orphan since the age of nine, the young man, whose full name was Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela (Rolihlahla being a family alias), was left in the care of the Thembu ruler, Chief David Jongintaba Dalindyebo , a cultured aristocrat who felt compelled to posthumously reward Mphakanyiswa, his cousin, for the services rendered to his dynastic interests.
He received primary education at a Wesleyan (Methodist) mission near his adoptive godfather’s palace and at the Clarkebury Boarding Institute in Engcobo, and secondary at the Healdtown Methodist Boarding School in Fort Beaufort . His primary school teacher, a British missionary, gave him the Anglophone name Nelson, which became valid for legal purposes.
In 1939 , after completing school instruction, typical of a scion of the Xhosa nobility, which seemed aimed at making him the civil servant and courtier that his father had been, Mandela went to the city of Alice to obtain a law degree from Fort Hare University College , an academic institution reserved for non-white students. There he met Oliver Tambo , hereinafter close friend and comrade, among others .
Political career
In 1944 he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a movement against the oppression of South African blacks. Mandela was one of the leaders of the Congress Youth League , which would go on to constitute the dominant group of the ANC; its ideology was an African socialism: nationalist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist.
After the creation of the South African National Party in 1948 , with its policy of racial segregation, ( Apartheid ), Mandela gained importance within the African National Congress, especially in the Civil Disobedience Campaign of 1952 , and the People’s Congress of 1955 , in which the adoption of the Freedom Charter provides the main program in the case against Apartheid.
During this time, Mandela and attorney Oliver Tambo run a law firm that provides low-cost legal advice to many blacks who otherwise would not have had legal representation.
In 1957 he separated from his first wife Evelyn Ntoko Mase, with whom he had two children, a girl who died while nursing and his first-born Madiba Thembekili who died in 1969 in a car accident.
Initially committed to non-violent methods of resistance, following the inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi , Mandela and 150 other colleagues were arrested on December 5 , 1956 and sentenced to prison, serving between 1956 and 1983 until they were released.
Between 1952 and 1959 , the African National Congress suffered a rupture, and a new class of black activists emerged, the Africanists, demanding more drastic actions against the National Party regime. The leadership of the African National Congress, led by Albert Lutuli , Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu , feel not only that events are rushing, but also that their leadership is beginning to be at stake. Consequently they reinforce their position through alliances with small political parties of diverse ethnic representation, trying to appear with broader horizons than the Africanists. The Statute of Liberty Issued at the Klip town Conferenceis ridiculed by Africanists for allowing the 100,000 votes of the African National Congress to be relegated to a simple vote in a parliamentary alliance, in which four of the five general secretaries representing political parties were members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) .
In 1959 the African National Congress lost its militant support when most Africanists, with financial support from Ghana and help from the Basotho in the Transvaal , split to form the Pan-African Congress (PAC), under the leadership of Robert Sobukwe. and Potlako Leballo .
In March 1960 , after the Sharpeville Massacre suffered by PAC activists, and the consequent political exclusion of the SACP and ANC, both joined the African Resistance Movement (liberal renegades), and the PAC began armed resistance. The ANC / SACP uses the Pan-African Conference of 1961 , in which all parties decide a common strategy, for a dramatic call to arms by Mandela, announcing the formation of the Lanza de la Nación command , in the image of the guerrilla movements Jews. This command was led by Mandela himself, with the help of Jewish activists such as Denis Goldberg , Lionel Bernsteinand Harold Wolpe .
In 1962 he traveled to various African countries raising funds, receiving military training and propaganda for the South African cause. On his return he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. A subsequent trial against the leaders of the Lanza de la Nación sentenced him to life imprisonment in 1964 . That same year he was appointed president of the ANC.
Prison
Mandela was prisoner number 466/64 for 27 years. In Robben Island Prison, he served eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison. While in jail, his reputation grew and he became known as the most important black leader in South Africa. In prison, he and others did forced labor in a lime quarry. The prison conditions were very harsh. Prisoners were segregated by race and blacks received fewer rations. Political prisoners were separated from common criminals and had fewer privileges. Mandela, as a prisoner in the lowest group in the rankings, was only allowed one visit and one letter every six months. Letters, if they arrived, were often delayed for long periods and read by prison censors.
In prison Mandela studied by correspondence through the external program of the University of London , obtaining the degree of Law Degree. He was appointed to the post of Rector of the University of London in the 1981 elections , but Princess Anne won.
One of the lesser known aspects of his captivity was the false escape operation that the South African Secret Service prepared in 1969 . The real goal was to assassinate Mandela under the guise of a recapture. But the British Intelligence Service learned of the plot and thwarted the entire operation. The English secret agent Gordon Winter narrates it in his memoir Inside Boss , published in 1981 .
In March 1982 Mandela was transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison , along with other senior ANC leaders: Walter Sisulu, Andrew Mlangeni , Ahmed Kathrada and Raymond Mhlaba . It has been speculated that it was a question of eliminating the influence of these leaders on the new generation of young black activists imprisoned on Robben Island. However, the National Party, through Minister Kobie Coetsee , said the move was to allow discreet contact between them and the South African government.
In February 1985 , President Botha offered Mandela’s conditional release in exchange for giving up the armed struggle. Coetsee and other ministers had advised Botha against making this decision, arguing that Mandela would never commit his organization to abandon the armed struggle in exchange for personal freedom. Mandela actually declined the offer, making a statement through his daughter Zindzi saying:”What freedom is offered to me, while the organization of the people is still prohibited? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.”
During those years, his wife Winnie symbolized the continuity of the struggle, reaching important positions in the ANC.
Over the next four years, a series of meetings took place that laid the groundwork for future contacts and negotiations, but little real progress was made.
In 1988 Mandela was transferred to Victor Verster prison , remaining there until his release. Various restrictions were lifted and Harry Schwarz was able to visit him. Schwarz, Mandela’s friend, had known him since college when they were classmates.
Throughout Mandela’s incarceration, local and international pressure on the South African government to release Mandela was notorious and in 1989 , South Africa reached a crossroads when President Botha suffered a stroke and was replaced by Frederik Willem. by Klerk . De Klerk announced Mandela’s release in February 1990 and paved the way for dismantling racial segregation, making him his main interlocutor in negotiating the democratization process.
After 38 years of marriage to Winnie Madikizela ( Winnie Mandela ), he separated and finally divorced on March 19 , 1996 . With Winnie he had two daughters, Zenani (Zeni), born on February 4 , 1958 , and Zindziswa (Zindzi), born in 1960 .
President of Southafrica
Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa in the first session of the new Parliament in 1994 . Cabinet positions were determined based on the number of seats in the political parties in Parliament. Each of the parties that obtained 80 or more seats in the elections had the right to appoint a vice president. Thabo Mbeki of the ANC was elected alternate president, and former President Frederik de Klerk of the National Party became second in office.
The president defined rules of the game that balanced the indisputable dominance of the ANC with cooperation and the granting of parcels of power and responsibility to the other important parties, some of which – particularly, Buthelez’s Inkatha – were not natural allies and neither not even factual, but only forced and necessary partners, for the common good.
During Mandela’s presidential five-year period, the political system worked: full international support was assured; He involved the white elites, after calming their last apprehensions, in the normalization of the country; dialectically disarmed, more quickly than expected, the extreme racist right, which completely cut itself off from the political scene; and it calmed the violent tensions in the province of KwaZulu-Natal , after the IFP gradually accepted its position in the new political order.
The ANC assimilated the principles of parliamentary democracy, allowing the normal functioning of a true parliamentary opposition (although without the possibility of alternation at the will of the majority), a freedom of the press, an independent judiciary and the legal framework provided by one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.
The Macroeconomic Strategy for Growth, Employment and Redistribution, better known as the GEAR Program , published in June 1996, included a set of orthodox actions (anti-inflationary monetary policy, fiscal discipline, prudent budgets) that underpinned a structural adjustment of the South African economy .
The government opted for vigorous public policies that made possible the distribution of national income, the correction of abysmal social and economic differences based on race and, without openly proclaiming it, so as not to give fuel to accusations of elitism, the creation of a bourgeoisie and a black middle class freed from the welfare mentality and ready to fight for wealth in a competitive context.
In October 1998 , Parliament passed the Employment Equity Law, which was based on the principle of affirmative action, or positive discrimination, in favor of non-whites, although at the end of the legislature its provisions still did not enter into force.
By the end of his term, the Mandela government had improved the situation of the black majority with the extension of social services in the populous slums and the emergence of an incipient middle class but whites, who made up less than 14% of the population, they continued to run practically the entire financial system and the business world. In this sense, the equity and redistributive policies, the true development of which was to compete with future administrations, barely made their positive effects noticeable.
During the Mandela government the military and political institutions of South Africa were completely restructured. The new national defense force maintained the former South African Defense Force (FDSA) and the former Bantustan defense forces of Transkei , Bophuthastswana , Venda and Ciskei and encompassed members of the former Nation Spear guerrillas , the arm armed the ANC.
Recent life
On his 80th birthday, the 18 of July of 1998 , he married Graca Machel , widow of Samora Machel , the former president of Mozambique and sponsor of the ANC , who died in 1986 in a dubious plane crash.
The 6 of January of 2005 died the second son of Mandela, Makgatho Mandela, a lawyer and businessman, at the age of 54 years in Johannesburg as a result of AIDS .
In June of 2004 , Mandela announced his retirement from public life with the words:”Don’t call me, I’ll call you”
Mandela leads a campaign against AIDS and continues to promote peace and reconciliation at the international level in his foundation. It has also created a Children’s Fund and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation , which awards scholarships to young South Africans.
Health condition
Mandela suffered recurrently from respiratory ailments, contracted during his 27 years in apartheid prisons .
The 8 of June of 2013 , was admitted to a hospital in Pretoria in the “serious but stable” for relapse of a lung infection. It was the fourth hospitalization since December 2012 . Mandela’s condition went from “serious” to “critical” since June 23 , 2013.
Death
After a long fight against a lung disease, contracted after 27 years in prison, he passed away on December 5 , 2013, at the age of 95. During a live intervention, South African President Jacob Zuma , communicated to his country and to the world the news of the death of the South African leader. About him he expressed:He was the greatest son of the country (…) What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human. We saw in him what we seek in ourselves (…) Now he is resting (…) now he is at peace.