Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (1918-2013) was an icon in every way. He was an activist, a politician and a principled man. His father was a local chief and a councillor in government in his day, who was a avowed polygamist who had four wives, and was equally principled to the point that he lost his job for standing up to a white magistrate’s ‘unreasonable demands’. So one can say activism was already in young Nelson’s DNA right from the start.
Mandela was given the forename Rolihlahla which basically meant ‘troublemaker’ and he lived up to his name right from early days. He caused a lot of trouble for the apartheid regime in South Africa in his youth days.
Apartheid was a big thing in South Africa when Mandela was growing up, and he was involved in the very thick of the fight against it, inspire of the intimidation and threats to his life and family by the then apartheid regime.
He went through a lot in his upbringing and wound up in many difficult situations before landing in Johannesburg to start work as a night watchman in a white mining company which is where he tasted his first sight of “South African capitalism in action”.
Mandela fought, through the African National Congress, for the rights of the black man all his life. He was arrested so many times, tirtured and imprisoned, the latest of which was in 1962 when he was fingered by an agent of the American CIA as one who was inciting workers to go on strike.
Mandela was jailed after a prolonged and celebrated trial, and he occupied some of the most notorious prisons in the land for a period of 27 years.
Many times during his incarceration he was told of the desire of the government to release him on the condition that he renounces his claim to want to fight for the masses, and many times he refused, preferring to stay inside than compromise his beliefs and principles. He insisted on an unconditional pardon, or nothing!
He was released in February 1990 and immediately was catapulted to the top of the ANC and at the centre of the then white government’s promise of free and fair, all-inclusive elections.
Mandela was the ANC candidate and in 1994 became the first black President of post-apartheid South Africa.
His words from pre-prison, from inside the prison and from outside have been the guiding force for many through the years. Te principles of wanting all things African, his firm belief in Africa and Africans as a people, is a legacy that can not be contested.
The international attention he commanded from within prison all the way till when he was released and when he was in government made him a global icon in all ways.
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