Home » The Extraordinary Life of Nelson Mandela

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Nelson Mandela, the man has always existed, even when locked away in a lonely cell on the rocky, battered and forgotten Robin Island, the world was somehow aware of this remarkable man. Personally, I cannot recall when I first became acquainted with him, he was just always there, a part of my life, like he was a part of everyone's life. Indeed, he was even more than that, he was a part of the global consciousness, all of us were aware of this man, this one man, who was still a thorn in the side of the truly monstrous apartheid regime of South Africa. It always appeared quite ordinary that I, a small boy in the barren midlands of Ireland had a link with a man in a cell, on a rocky outcrop in the South Atlantic Ocean, that everybody seemed to love and respect, except of course his barbaric captors who were scared witless of him. So, when I was seven, it didn't faze me that a young woman named Mary Manning, who worked as a cashier for a chain-store conglomerate called Dunnes Stores, refused to handle fruit from apartheid era South Africa. She along with ten of her colleagues were suspended from work, they staged a picket which was to last almost three years. Miraculously, they won, the government caved in an banned the importation of South African goods. What guts, what resolve, what courage these young people had, inspired by the strength of Mandela. Similarly, growing up in Ireland there were many songs about Mandela, in particular The Specials' Free Nelson Mandela which never left the radio waves in 1984.

So, how was he so prevalent? Why was he cared about so much? How did his star still shine? There were many other worthwhile causes in the world, which were forgotten about or indeed were never even known about in the first place, many other incarcerated freedom fighters even within South Africa that failed to even register. So what made Nelson Mandela so different and indeed so impossible to simply forget? We need to go right back to the beginning, to where he, the man began. He was born in South Africa on 18 July 1918 in a small village named Mezvo in the territory of Transkei. His great-grandfather was King of the Thembu people, his father however fell foul of the colonial authorities and he was deprived of his position as Chief of Mezvo village. Mandela's father had four wives, with which he fathered thirteen children, Mandela been born to his third wife, Nosekini Fanny. He was christened Rolihlahla Mandela, his English teacher later appropriating the Christian name Nelson upon him. He was educated in turn at Wesleyan mission school, Clarkebury Boarding Institute, the Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort and Fort Hare University. It was at Fort Hare University that the young Mandela began to become involved in politics, arranging a boycott against university policies. He was suspended from the university for this action, so he re-located to Johannesburg to complete his studies at the University of Witwatersrand. He graduated in 1942 with a degree in law, his time at Witwatersand had found him becoming more actively involved in politics, in 1942 he also joined the African National Congress (ANC).

Under the leadership of Anton Lembede, young members like Nelson Mandela began the formidable task of transforming the ANC into a mass movement by expanding it's membership to include the millions of illiterate working people in the towns and countryside of South Africa. They formed the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), Mandela proved to be a highly efficient organiser and tireless worker and was soon elected to the Secretaryship of the Youth League in 1947. In 1948, the Afrikaner-dominated National Party won the all-white elections on it's platform of apartheid racial segregation thus encouraging the ANC to accept the ANCYL methods of boycott, strike and civil disobedience as official policy. The party was becoming more militant, taking it's lead from the younger more radical members. On this wave of change, Mandela was elected to the National Executive Committee (NEC) in 1950. The ANCYL programme also included attainment of full citizenship, direct parliamentary representation for all South Africans, the redistribution of land, trade union rights, compulsory education for children and mass literacy for adults. One can only but be so impressed at their ambition, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds they stood firm and stamped out their rights, astonishing really. Mandela was appointed as National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign that the ANC unleashed in 1952. The Campaign was designed to begin with a small core of radical volunteers, from whom it would spread like wildfire to involve more and more ordinary people, eventually culminating in a mass, national defiance.

Mandela's role was to travel the country to organise resistance to discriminatory legislation, he was arrested, charged and convicted of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act, he was given a suspended sentence. In addition, he was prohibited from attending gatherings and was restricted to the confines of Johannesburg for six months. During his confinement to the capital, Mandela along with Oliver Tambo opened a law practice, in which they represented thousands of people who were subjected to horrific treatment by the apartheid government, offering low cost legal counsel. The authorities demanded that they move their practice from the city into the middle of nowhere, citing land segregation legislation, it effectively meant that they would be abandoning their huge database of clients. Of course, true to form, they refused to budge an inch, heroically standing by their beleaguered clients. The ANC began searching for methods to maintain contact with its membership without having to hold mammoth meetings, they required a system of powerful local and regional branches to whom power could be devolved, the task of organising such a system was handed to Mandela, who conceived of the M-Plan which was named after him. In the latter part of the 1950s, Mandela turned his attentions to the exploitation of labour, the pass laws, the segregation at universities and the Bantustan policy. On 5 December 1956, Mandela was arrested along with one hundred fifty others and charged with treason, all were tried on what became known as the Marathon Treason Trial of 1956-1961, all received acquittals. Around this time, Mandela began to become more radicalised, the ANC was now illegal, the organisation had been driven underground and as a result many of it's members began to become more and more open to more militant means.

In 1961, Mandela became leader of the ANC'S armed wing, Umknonto we Sizwe (MK) and began to co-ordinate sabotage campaigns against military and government targets, he also organised paramilitary training and fund raised for the movement. As a result of these activities, Mandela was forced to go on the run, adapting many disguises to evade capture. Working on a tip-off from the CIA, the South African authorities finally managed to locate him, he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. In 1963, he was brought before the Rivonia Trial, where along with ten other ANC leaders, he was tried on a list of charges including planning a foreign invasion of South Africa. Mandela denied this charge but he admitted to resorting to violent tactics, outlining in an impassioned opening defence from the dock that the ANC had tried to lobby the government by constitutional means but it had been made clear to them through sustained brutality, the referendum establishing the Republic of South Africa and the banning of the ANC that they had no other choice but taking up arms. All with the exception of one were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, Mandela was transported to the maximum security facility on Robben Island. Conditions on the island were absolutely appalling; prisoners were assaulted at will by the all-white prison wardens and dogs were often set upon the inmates. All prisoners were set to hard labour in stone quarries, lime quarries and building projects. Mandela was classified as a D-Group prisoner and so was only allowed one visitor and one letter every six months. The visits were only allowed last for a maximum of thirty minutes and letters were often held up for long periods and made almost entirely unreadable by the prison censors. There was no access to any reading material with the exception of the Bible.

Extraordinarily, the only thing that the prisoners had to keep them going and give them hope was football and the Makana Football Association. The Association set up a football league consisting of teams made up by the prisoners with the teams divided by their political affiliation. It created solidarity amongst the prisoners and indeed it proved to them that they could together run a federation under the harshest, most oppressive of regimes. My God it taught them patience, they had to wait for fifteen years to be granted the right to use a proper football, they made football nets from the fishing nets that washed up on the rocky shore of the island. Astonishingly, Mandela locked away on this rocky outpost, flung into the South Atlantic Ocean and deprived of all access to the outside world, still managed to capture the world's imagination and ensure that the plight of South Africa was at the forefront of the world's thoughts.

In March 1982, Mandela and other senior ANC leaders were transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison. The South African authorities made this move in an effort to remove the influence of these senior leaders from the younger generations of black activists, to eliminate the so called ‘Mandela University'. In February 1985, Mandela was offered his freedom in return for renouncing armed struggle, he refused, stating ‘what freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned?' The South African government began secretive negotiations with Mandela in November of that year, they had tried everything to silence him and had failed as they realised that no progress of the nation could occur without the involvement of Madiba. Mandela was released in February after almost three decades of incarceration, that same month, the ban on the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups was lifted. Mandela once again took up leadership of the ANC leading them into the country's first multi-racial elections in April 1994, with the ANC winning sixty-two percent of the vote. On 10 May 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first black President. He reigned as President from May 1994 until June 1999, presiding over the transition from apartheid, winning international respect for his unyielding advocacy of national and international reconciliation. After his retirement as President, Mandela has fronted or represented many social and humanitarian organisations.