(CNN Spanish) — Nelson Mandela was clear that had he not spent 27 years in prison, his role in freeing South Africa from apartheid would not have been possible.
“It’s possible that if I hadn’t gone to jail and been able to read and listen to so many people’s stories… maybe I wouldn’t have learned these things,” Mandela said about his experience of nearly three decades in prison.
His defiance of white minority rule and his long imprisonment for fighting racism brought apartheid in South Africa, legalized racial segregation enforced by the government until the 1990s, to the world’s attention.
As his country grappled with the wounds of segregation, Mandela became the conscience of South Africa. He was known by many as the “world’s most famous political prisoner” and the “Great Black Hope of South Africa” ​​for his battle for freedom and against racial oppression.
February 11, 1990Mandela finally walked out of jail a free man. And his message, after those long decades of imprisonment, was one of reconciliation, not revenge.
“As I walked out the door to the door that would lead to my freedom, I knew that if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I would still be in prison.” Mandela said after being released.
The leader inspired the world after negotiating a peaceful end to racial segregation and urging forgiveness from the white government that jailed him. His actions and struggle also led him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, together with Frederik Willem de Klerk. Y on May 10, 1994, was inaugurated as the first black president of a democratic South Africa. He established himself as the South African symbol of the fight against racial oppression.
However, Mandela, along with the African National Congress, was not always viewed favorably by many countries in the international community. Until 2008 he was on the US terror list for his militancy against the apartheid regime.
There are also revealing details of Mandela’s character in the many autobiographies that have been written about him: he had an unshakeable stubbornness. A quick and easy smile. An even quicker frown when he approached her with an argument he wanted no part of.
“He was a father figure, an elder statesman and a global ambassador,” Ayo Johnson, director of Viewpoint Africa, which sells content about the continent to media outlets, told CNN.
The beginning of Mandela’s political life
Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela was born in the village of Mvezo, Transkei, South Africa, on July 18, 1918. The name Nelson was given to him by his teacher, Miss Mdingane, in accordance with the custom of giving all school children “Christian” names.
During his life, he was a complex man. He went from a militant freedom fighter, to decades in prison, and later a unifying figure, to an elder statesman.
His political struggle began at the age of 20 when he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and helped found the Youth League between 1914 and 1943. He was president of this entity in 1951, and founded a movement of nonviolent resistance Defense against Unjust Laws. But Mandela was not satisfied with the ANC and its old guard politics. There he began his civil disobedience and his lifelong commitment to breaking the chains of segregation in South Africa.
From left: Patrick Molaoa, Robert Resha and Mandela walk to the courtroom for their treason trial in Johannesburg. (Credit: API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
His time in prison
In 1956, Mandela and dozens of other political activists were charged with high treason for activities against the government. His trial lasted five years, but he was finally acquitted.
Meanwhile, the fight for equality became bloodier.
Four years after his treason charges, police shot 69 unarmed black protesters in Sharpeville Township as they protested outside a station. The Sharpeville Massacre drew condemnation from around the world and prompted Mandela to take a more militant tone in the fight against apartheid.
The South African government banned the ANC after the massacre. Whereupon an angry Mandela went underground to form a new military wing of the organization.
The African National Congress heeded the calls for stronger action against the apartheid regime, and Mandela helped launch an armed wing that attacked government symbols, including post offices and dependencies, and was a defense mechanism against the government violence, he said.
In 1962, Mandela secretly received military training in Morocco and Ethiopia. When he returned to South Africa months later that year, he was arrested and charged with illegally leaving the country and inciting protests.
Mandela represented himself at the trial and was jailed briefly before returning to court. In 1964, after the famous Rivonia trial, he was sentenced to life in prison for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government.
His next stop was Robben Island prison, where he spent 18 of the 27 years he served. He described his first days there as tough.
“There was a lot of physical abuse, and a lot of my peers went through that humiliation,” he said.
The return to freedom
After 18 years, he was transferred to other prisons, where he was held in better conditions until he was released in 1990.
Months before his release, he obtained a law degree in absentia from the University of South Africa.
His freedom finally came after years of an international protest led by Winnie Mandela, a social worker whom the leader married in 1958, three months after divorcing his first wife.
Nelson and Winnie Mandela raise clenched fists to greet a crowd following Madiba’s release in 1990.
Mandela was prohibited from reading newspapers in prison, but his wife provided a link to the outside world.
She told him about the growing calls for his release and updated him on the fight against apartheid.
Global pressure to free Mandela grew as political, economic and sporting sanctions were imposed, and the white minority government became more isolated.
In 1988, at the age of 70, Mandela was hospitalized with tuberculosis, a disease whose effects afflicted him until the day he died. He recovered and was sent to a minimum security prison farm, where he was assigned his own quarters and was able to receive additional visitors.
When Botha’s successor, FW de Klerk, took office, he undertook to negotiate an end to apartheid.
On February 11, 1990, Mandela walked out of prison to thunderous applause, his clenched right fist raised above his head. Still as upright and proud, he said, as the day he entered prison nearly three decades earlier.
Four years after his release, in South Africa’s first multi-racial election, he became president. He the first black president of the country.
“The day he was inducted as president, we stood on the roof of the Union Building,” de Klerk recalled years later. “He took my hand and lifted it up. He put his arm around me and we showed a unity that resonated throughout South Africa and the world.”
Nobel Peace Prize and other causes
In 1993, Mandela and President FW de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the peaceful transition from a racially segregated system.
De Klerk (right) and Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
South Africa’s fight for reconciliation was summed up in the 1995 Rugby World Cup final in Johannesburg, when they faced heavily favored New Zealand.
Mandela’s deft use of the national team to heal South Africa was chronicled in director Clint Eastwood’s 2009 feature film “Invictus,” which starred Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, the white South African captain of the team. rugby.
Before the real-life match, Mandela walked onto the pitch, wearing a green and gold South African jersey with Pienaar’s number on the back.
In 1999, Mandela did not seek a second term as president. Thus he kept his promise to rule for only one term. Thabo Mbeki succeeded him in June of the same year.
After leaving the presidency, he retired from active politics but remained in public life, championing causes such as human rights, world peace, and the fight against AIDS.
This was a decision born out of tragedy: his only surviving son, Makgatho Mandela, died of AIDS at age 55 in 2005. Another son, Madiba Thembekile, died in a car accident in 1969.
In 2004, just weeks before his 86th birthday, he announced his retirement from public life to spend more time with his loved ones.
Mandela last appeared in public during the 2010 World Cup organized by South Africa.
In the last years of his life, Mandela suffered from multiple health problems, including a recurring lung infection that led to numerous hospitalizations.
Nelson Mandela passed away on December 5, 2013 at his home in Johannesburg, South Africa.
— With reporting by CNN’s John Battersby and Faith Karimi.
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