Nelson Mandela was the anti-apartheid revolutionary who endured twenty-seven years in prison and emerged to lead South Africa peacefully out of white-minority rule, becoming one of the most admired statesmen of the twentieth century. Born into the royal family of the Thembu people in the rural Eastern Cape, he trained as a lawyer and joined the African National Congress, rising as a leader of its campaigns against the apartheid system of racial oppression.
As peaceful protest met with ever harsher repression, Mandela helped launch an armed wing of the movement. In 1964 he was tried for sabotage and, in a speech from the dock that became famous around the world, declared his readiness to die for the ideal of a free and democratic society. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and spent most of the next quarter century on the bleak Robben Island.
Through the long years of captivity, Mandela became the global symbol of the struggle against apartheid, his moral authority growing even as he remained behind bars. Mounting internal resistance and international pressure finally forced the white government to negotiate, and in 1990 he was released to scenes of worldwide rejoicing.
Choosing reconciliation over revenge, Mandela worked with President F. W. de Klerk to dismantle apartheid, and the two shared the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1994 he was elected the country's first Black president in its first fully democratic vote. He served a single term, championing healing and unity, and died in 2013, revered as the father of his nation.