Nelson Mandela

information on Nelson Mandela.


Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Summary:

Mandela was on 18 Born July 1918 in Mvezo, a tiny village on the Mbashe in the Transkei. His father, Henry Gadla Mphakanyiswa, the chief of Mvezo, named him Rolihlahla, which means troublemaker. (Where does the name Mandela came, is not explained in the book.) The family belonged to the Thembus, part of the Xhosa people. Rolihlahlas father had four wives, each of whom had their own kraal with animals, fields and huts. This kraal or farms were far apart, and the chief changed every few days from one woman to the next. Overall, he became the father of four sons and nine daughters. Because of his rebelliousness against the white government authority (Magistrate) him not only the chieftainship, but also a large part of its assets and income were removed shortly after birth Rolihlahlas. Rolihlahlas mother Fanny Nosekeni then moved with her children to Qunu, a village west of Mvezo, where friends and relatives supported them. Her husband visited her there continues every month for about a week.

Most men of Qunu spent most of the year as a laborer in the mines on the Reef. They only returned to plow the fields. The chopping, weeding and harvesting was as the rearing of livestock to the work of women and children.

My life, like that of most Xhosa at that time, was shaped in large and small ways by custom, ritual and taboo. this was the alpha and omega of our existence and was not questioned. (Page 22)

With seven and a half years Rolihlahla came to the village school, where his teacher gave him the English name Nelson.

Two years later, Nelson Mandela's father died, his mother took him to the Regent of Mqhekezweni who recorded the boy as their own. After one or two days passed Nelson's mother and returned to Qunu. Nelson Mandela was growing along with Nomafu, the daughter of the regent, on. Justice, the only son of the Regent, who was four years older than Nelson, visited by this time the hundred kilometers away in boarding Clarkebury.

To be recognized as a Xhosa man, Nelson Mandela had to undergo the ritual of circumcision at the age of sixteen. Along with twenty-five other young people he was prepared in two remote grass huts for days at the ceremony and its significance. Before a crowd of parents and other relatives to put the candidate who had just draped a blanket in a row. The "Ingcibi" then knelt in turn before them, each pulled the foreskin of a boy forward and separated them with a single cut of his "Assegai" said meter from. This had the budding men endure without anesthesia, and they were allowed to not moan. Correspond to the ritual they buried their foreskins while the next night in anthill, so that no magician could abuse them for evil purposes.

Soon after Nelson Mandela was admitted institution of the Clarkebury boarding. On the first day he wore for the first time in his life and was therefore boots "like a freshly shod horse."

Already on the stairs I had made a terrible noise and had repeatedly slipped by a hair. When I stomped into the classroom, I noticed that two students observed in the first row my awkwardness appearance with great amusement. The Nicer both leaned over to the other and said so loudly that everyone could hear it: "The country boy is not used to wearing shoes," to which her friend laughed. I was blind was anger and embarrassment. (Page 53)

1937 Nelson Mandela followed his fraternal friend Justice to the Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort. At twenty-one he began at the University of Fort Hare - the time was the only higher education institution for blacks in South Africa - English, anthropology, politics and Native Administration to study, specifically to the target, and later as an interpreter for the Native Affairs Department working. This was true among blacks as the best career.

Fort Hare accustomed Nelson Mandela to clean not only to toilets and hot showers, but he also began his teeth instead of ashes, and toothpicks with toothpaste and a toothbrush.

During a stay of Justice and Nelson in Mqhekezweni them opened the Regent, he had picked out two girls from very good families as wives for them. Although this procedure corresponded to the Customs, the two young men were reluctant to forced marriage and therefore fled to Johannesburg.

There the meantime twenty-three years old Nelson Mandela first lived with a family with six children in sublease, in a one-room tin roof hut without heating, electricity and water supply in the backyard. In early 1942, a friend gave him a free room in the building complex of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, the recruiting office for miners. A cousin of Nelson Mandela, Garlick Mbekeni made him with the black real estate agent Walter Sisulu known, and whose recommendation he could start as a messenger in the white law firm Witkin and Eidelman Sidelsky. By night he studied the distance learning material that he got sent from the University of South Africa.

The regent, who had received him as a son died in winter of 1942 / 43rd At the funeral of Nelson Mandela traveled Mqhekezweni. During his short stay there, he also met Justice again, who now assumed the office of the chief of his dead father.

After he had passed the final examination for the Bachelor of Arts in late 1942, Nelson Mandela once again returned to the beginning of 1943 graduation at the University of Fort Hare back. Finally he was able to start law school at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

I can not say exactly when I became politicized, when I knew that I would totally prescribe my life to the struggle for freedom [...]
I had no enlightenment, no unique revelation, no moment of truth, it was a constant accumulation of a thousand different things, a thousand slights, a thousand unerinnerten moments, the anger within me produced, rebellious attitude, the desire to fight the system that my people incarcerated. There was no particular day I said to myself, from now on I will dedicate myself to the liberation of my people, but instead I just did it because I could not help it. (Page 135)

By Walter Sisulu, who had helped Nelson Mandela to the job at the law firm and the end of 1949 should be Secretary General of the ANC, he came increasingly into contact with politicians. (The African National Congress, the oldest political organization of Africans in South Africa, had been founded in 1912 after the model of the Indian Congress.) The House of Mandela, Sisulu also met Evelyn Mase, a quiet country girl that was his first wife. After the first two at a makeshift brother and a sister Evelyn had lived, they rejected the government due to the birth of their first child in the spring of 1946 a house.

In addition to his training in the law firm and the study of Nelson Mandela committed to continue for the ANC, was elected to the Executive Committee of the Transvaal in 1947 and 1950 in the National Executive Committee of the ANC. To discuss with knowledgeable Communists, he read the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong. The idea of ​​a classless society and the Marxist call for revolutionary action fascinated him, but he was reserved about the Communist Party.

At that time I knew far more accurate, while I was a what. (Page 167)

Dr. Daniel François Malan (1874 - 1959), in 1948 for six years, led the chosen only from the white minority South African government after the election victory of the Nationalists, fought for the codification of the de facto force for decades discrimination against Africans and Indians. 1950 were adopted with the Population and Registration Act and the Group Areas Act two key apartheid laws. Following the example of Mahatma Gandhi in 1952, the ANC called on to disregard discriminatory laws. Twenty-one men, including Nelson Mandela, therefore had to answer before a court in Johannesburg. She was sentenced to nine months imprisonment with hard labor, but from the punishment continued for two years on probation.

After Nelson Mandela had completed the prescribed three years training period at the law firm Witkin and Eidelman Sidelsky, he worked successively for two other firms. His university studies, he broke off after several failed exam and instead completed a state licensing examination to the legal profession. He settled in August 1952 as a lawyer down and opened the same year along with his friend and partner Oliver Tambo a Law Firm located in Johannesburg, although they could have without ministerial approval no office there due to the Urban Areas Act and rejected their appropriate application was.

In his public speeches Nelson Mandela finally took the view that non-violence and passive resistance was not reached.

Because of his political activities he was at the age of thirty-five years for the second time occupied by a spell, that he could not leave for a period of two years Johnnesburg and participate in any political meeting, let alone even occur as a speaker. In April 1954 requested the Law Society of the Transvaal, that the Bar Association, Mandela's approval as a lawyer, but the Supreme Court dismissed the application and saddled the Law Society, the process costs.

Once the spell ended in September 1955, Nelson Mandela visited his mother in Qunu and the widow of the former regent in Mqhekezweni.

I wondered - not for the first time - whether it is justified to neglect the welfare of his own family to fight for the welfare of others. Can there be more important than taking care of his elderly mother? (Page 249)

Already in March 1956 Mandela was banned again leaving Johannesburg and attending political meetings - this time for five years. Before the eyes of his wife and children, the security police arrested him on 5 Dezember in 1956. 105 Africans, 21 Indians, 23 whites and 7 hybrids - almost the entire leadership of the ANC - the prosecutor accused of treason by a nation-wide conspiracy for the violent overthrow of the government before. It was punishable by death! Finally, the men were released on bail, but had to appear at the hearings, in court.

When Nelson Mandela was released from prison, his wife had moved with the children to a brother. Evelyn Mandela, a trained nurse, had attended a midwifery courses in Durban in 1953 and was continued for several months. Then she joined the Jehovah's Witnesses, and helped to spread their publication "The Watchtower". She tried to convince her husband, but the thrust is mainly on the doctrine passively accept a possible rejection. Evelyn threw his hand before he neglected the family due to his political work and the choice between marriage and the ANC him eventually.

Thirteen months took the inquest. In January 1958, it was decided to indict 95 of the 156 accused in the Supreme Court of the Transvaal.

While Nelson Mandela was waiting for the actual start of the process, he learned Nomzamo Winnifred ("Winnie") Madikizela know who had recently completed her studies at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work in Johannesburg and worked as first black social worker at Baragwanath Hospital. The two fell in love and married on 14 Juni, 1958.

Only on 3 August 1959 - two years and eight months after Mandela's arrest - the actual court proceedings began against him and also his comrades accused of high treason. The prosecution had reached that the trial be held in Johannesburg took place in a former synagogue in Pretoria fifty kilometers away, where there was hardly ANC supporters. The defendants and their lawyers who all lived in Johannesburg, required at each of the trial five hours there and back down with a bus.

On 6 April 1959 an organization was formed, which was competing with the ANC in South African Freedom Movement: The Pan-African Congress (PAC). While committed to the ANC blacks, Indians, half-breeds and whites, Africans accepted the PAC only in its ranks. 1960 PAC called for demonstrations. In Sharpeville, a township fifty kilometers south of Johannesburg, the demonstrators gathered on 21 March before the police station. Although the crowd was unarmed, came the 75 policemen panicked and fired 700 shots. 400 people were injured, killed 69th The Sharpeville massacre sparked nationwide riots; alone in the Langa Township in Cape Town 50 000 people took to the streets. The government declared a state of emergency and banned both the PAC and the ANC.

Nelson Mandela was born on 30 Arrested again in March 1960. So that the process could be continued, they took him and other arrested accused to a prison in Pretoria. A year later, on 29 March 1961, the judge announced the verdict, saying the accused free.

Because the ANC was banned after the Sharpeville massacre and Nelson Mandela afraid of being locked up again despite the acquittal, he went into hiding and discussed at several clandestine meetings with other ANC leaders to build an underground organization. Often he disguised himself as a chauffeur. In this way he could travel with his car and pretend he was commissioned by a white road.

The underground life requires a seismic psychological sense. You have to plan every action, so small and seemingly insignificant they may be. Nothing is harmless. Everything is questionable. (Page 359)

Due to a held in October 1960 among whites referendum, the Union of South Africa on 31 different May 1961 from the Commonwealth and became a republic. Nelson Mandela called Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd (1901 - 1966) in a letter to convene a Constitutional Convention, but the Prime Minister (1958 - 1966) did not deign to reply.

A failed strike call illegal ANC in May 1961 Nelson Mandela finally convinced that only an armed struggle against the government promised success. He was thinking of sabotage and guerrilla warfare. It has brought in the underground executive of the ANC to violent clashes that ended with a compromise: while the ANC continued to represent a non-violent politics, was Mandela's leadership a military organization called "Umkhonto we Sizwe" (The Spear of the Nation in November; abbreviated MK) is founded. On 16 December 1961 made the first MK attention through a series of bombings.

At the same time, the ANC received an invitation from the Pan African Freedom Movement for East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA) to a conference in Addis Ababa in February in 1962. The underground executive responsible Nelson Mandela to lead the delegation. Following the conference in Addis Ababa, he flew to Cairo, Tunis, Rabat, Algiers and in a number of states on the West Coast before traveling on to London. He met with numerous African leaders - including Kenneth D. Kaunda, Julius K. Nyerere, Leopold S. Senghor - and campaigned for political and financial support of the ANC and the MK. At the end of this month-long tour he wanted to leave for six months training in guerrilla war in Ethiopia. Because the situation came to a head in his home country, he could stay only eight weeks and then had to return to South Africa.

On the Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, the camouflaged headquarters of MK, met Nelson Mandela himself. With other leaders of the organization On the way to another secret meeting in Durban, he was wearing a chauffeur's uniform, and accompanied him to camouflage the white theater director Cecil Williams. But it did not help: On 5 August 1962 they were stopped and arrested by three civilian vehicles of the security police. Someone must have betrayed.

Nelson Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison for the strike call in May 1961, unauthorized departure from the country. That he should serve on Robben Iceland, located a 25 km off the coast of Cape Town prison island. But after two weeks, he was transferred back to the mainland, because on 11 July 1963 was the security police discovered and raided the MK-quarters in Rivonia, and 9 October to begin the trial "the state against Nelson Mandela and other" in Pretoria. He was charged with sabotage and conspiracy, not treason, because in this case the law would have required a longer preliminary investigation, and the death penalty could be imposed as well. In June 1964, the judge announced the verdict: He imposed on all defendants a life sentence.

Again, Nelson Mandela came to Robben Iceland. The prisoners had to first break stones in the prison yard, then working in a limestone quarry and in between collecting seaweed. (Only in 1977 the work requirement was abolished on Robben Iceland.) The work was hard, but when worse felt Mandela forced restriction of its contacts with the outside world only once in half a year he was allowed to be visited for half an hour, write a letter and received a .

The prison is the only thing worse than bad news about his own family, no message at all. It is increasingly difficult to cope with the disasters and tragedies finished that one imagines, than with realities, be they ever so unpleasant and cruel. A letter with bad news was certainly better than no letter. (Page 537)

In the spring of 1968, Nelson Mandela was the first time received a visit from his mother, his sister Mabel, his son and his daughter Makgatho Makaziwe and exceptionally talk not only thirty, but forty-five minutes with them. A few weeks later, his mother died of a heart attack. His request to get parole for the funeral, was also rejected as a year later, his request to be allowed ("Thembi") travel to his funeral at the age of twenty-five fatally injured in a traffic accident son Madiba Thembekile.

The ANC was formed on Robben Iceland a separate organization under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, but was limited to the needs of prisoners and mingled not aware of the political plans continue in the underground operating ANC one, because on the island lacked the men of the overview the situation in South Africa.

That changed a bit when the prison began in 1978, to read a message digest over the public address system daily. From 1980 to the inmates were allowed to buy newspapers.

Eighteen years was Nelson Mandela imprisoned on Robben Iceland. Then he was moved, without notice to the high security prison Pollsmoor southeast of Cape Town.

The clashes between the government and the freedom movement in South Africa came to a head. 1981 was killed in a surprise attack on the ANC offices in Maputo, so in neighboring Mozambique, thirteen people, the South African Defense Force. The ANC activist Ruth First in Maputo in August 1982 came to opening a letter bomb. In December 1982, the MK detonated a bomb in the nuclear power plant, which was built in Koeberg near Cape Town. A few days later, killed a South African military command forty-two ANC supporters in Maseru, the capital of the landlocked country of Lesotho. Nineteen people were killed in a car bombing of the MK in May 1983.

Finally, the willingness to de-escalate developed on both sides. Thus was associated Nelson Mandela at 31 January 1985 release available for the sixth time, this time by President PW Botha. However, he would have had to disassociate it from any öffentllich violence of the ANC in the political debate - and that he was not ready.

I wanted to make it clear that I was when I returned from the prison in the same states, out of which I had been arrested and would be forced to take the same activities again, for I was arrested. (Page 698)

He found it quite time to prepare for political talks between the ANC and the government. Without coordinating with other ANC leaders, he signaled the new Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee his willingness to talk.

I decided to inform anyone about what to do I was going [...] The ANC is a collective, but the government had made collectivity in this case impossible [...] I knew that my colleagues from above my disapprove the proposal and would frustrate my initiative even before it was born. There are times when a leader of the herd to go ahead and have to move in a new direction, trusting that he leads his people to the right path. (Page 705)

At the same time, the ANC called for to make the country ungovernable. Because of the unrest, the government imposed on 12 June 1986 a state of emergency. A few days later, Mandela was brought to a secret meeting with the Minister of Justice, at his residence. He was moved to Victor Verster prison 50 kilometers northeast of Cape Town, where he was able to move freely in a house with garden and swimming pool end of 1988. On 5 July 1989, the first meeting of the Einundsiebzigjährigen with President Botha took place - the six weeks later resigned from his post. On 15 August, the dreiundfünfzigjährige Frederik Willem de Klerk was sworn in as his successor. The new president sent on to abolish apartheid and lift the prohibitions of the ANC, the PAC and the Communist Party.

De Klerk initiated a systematic dismantling of many building blocks of apartheid. He opened the beaches of South Africa for people of every color and announced the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act would soon be lifted. Since 1953 this force had something that was known as "petty apartheid" and parks, theaters, restaurants, buses, libraries, toilets and other public institutions reserving certain breeds. In November, he announced that the National Security Management System, a body established under PW Botha body for combating anti-apartheid forces'll dissolved. (Page 739)

On 13 December 1989 de Klerk met with Nelson Mandela. At the second meeting, on 9 February 1990, the President opened the prisoner, they would release him from jail the next day. After more than seven years!

Before the prison filmed numerous reporters, such as Nelson Mandela was cheered by thousands of his followers. In Cape Town, the car in which he sat, and his wife Winnie was temporarily blocked by the enthusiastic crowd. And the stadium in Johannesburg, he gave a speech to 120 000 spectators. In his first press conference, he said, to see no contradiction between his support of armed struggle and commitment to negotiations.

It was the reality and the threat of armed struggle, which had brought the government to the brink of negotiations. I added that if the State cease doing violence to the ANC, the ANC will also keep the peace. (Page 758)

On 27 Mandela met in February 1990 at a meeting of the National Executive Committee of the ANC in Lusaka many political cronies for the first time in decades. Lusaka Ceasefire he flew to Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Algeria and Egypt, then to Stockholm and London. In July, he embarked on another tour of Europe and North America and has received inter alia by U.S. President George Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Although bloody clashes on 22 July 1990 in Sebokeng township about thirty people were killed in the Vaal Triangle, the ANC ended on 6 August in a joint statement with the South African government armed struggle at least for the time being ("Pretoria Minute").

Since the lifting of the ANC ban on 3 February 1990 was to convert the underground organization into a mass political party. On the ANC Annual Conference, the first held in July 1991 for thirty years back on South African soil, chose the 2244 voting delegates from home and abroad Nelson Mandela was unanimously elected president of the organization.

With the aim to involve Africans in government, began on 20 December 1991 in Johannesburg negotiations on a new constitution of South Africa. The composite of nineteen parties' Convention for a Democratic South Africa "(CODESA) began on 6 February 1992 to work out arrangements for a constituent assembly and an interim government.

Just as the negotiations were deadlocked, threatened a massacre to make all achievements destroyed again. On 17 June 1992 was a heavily armed command of competing with the ANC Inkatha, led by the Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Zulu tribal representation, the Vaal township of Boipatong and killed forty-six people, most of them women and children. As with previous attacks of this kind, the police took no action against the killers. Despite this massacre and other bloodbaths to de Klerk and Mandela met on 26 September again for an official interview.

The two leaders were honored in 1993 with the Nobel Peace Prize.

At the end of April 1994 - the same time as the entry into force of a provisional constitution - conducted the first free, non-racial elections in South Africa, the ANC won 62.6 percent of the vote and won 252 of the 400 seats in the National Constituent Assembly. Nelson Mandela was not at all unhappy that his party a two-thirds majority had just missed, because he did not want the impression that the Constitution is to be adopted only worn by the ANC.

Addendum to Nelson Mandel's autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom":

Nelson Mandela was born on 9 May 1994 elected the first black president of South Africa and subsequently formed a transitional government. By a large majority the Constituent Assembly approved on 8 May 1996, the constitution now elaborated. Nelson Mandela ruled South Africa until 1999. In the parliamentary elections in June, the ANC won 66.4 percent of votes. As the successor to Mandela's twenty-four years younger ANC politicians Thabo Mbeki was elected.

At a press conference on 13 April 1992 Nelson Mandela announced his separation from his wife Winnie. The divorce took place on 19 March 1996. On 18 July 1998 Mandela married Graça Machel, the fifty-two, the widow of former President of Mozambique.

Makgatho Mandela, Nelson Mandela's eldest son died on 7 January 2005 at the age of fifty-four years of AIDS.

8 June 2013 Nelson Mandela was brought for the fourth time in six months in a hospital in Pretoria. His condition will be critical.


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