BBC ON THIS DAY | 10 | 1994: Mandela becomes SA's first black president 1994: Mandela becomes SA's first black president Nelson Mandela has become South Africa's first black president after more than three centuries of white rule. Mr Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) party won 252 of the 400 seats in the first democratic elections of South Africa's history. The inauguration ceremony took place in the Union Buildings amphitheatre in Pretoria today, attended by politicians and dignitaries from more than 140 countries around the world. Never, never again will this beautiful land experience the oppression of one by another Nelson Mandela As part of the ceremony he pledged his allegiance to South Africa and his determination to continue his work for reconciliation. "I do hereby swear to be faithful to the Republic of South Africa and do solemnly and sincerely promise to promote that which will advance and to oppose all that may harm the republic... and to devote myself to the well-being of the republic and all its people." Jubilant scenes on the streets of Pretoria followed the ceremony with blacks, whites and coloureds celebrating together.

When the new president, flanked by First Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Second Deputy President FW de Klerk, appeared on the Botha Lawn beneath the Union Buildings the crowd went wild. More than 100,000 South African men, women and children of all races sang and danced with joy. Addressing the crowd President Mandela paid tribute to outgoing president Mr FW de Klerk: "He has made for himself a niche in history. "He has turned out to be one of the greatest reformers, one of the greatest sons of South Africa." He also spoke of the "human disaster" of apartheid. "We saw our country tear itself apart in terrible conflict... The time for healing of wounds has come...

Never, never again will this beautiful land experience the oppression of one by another." And urging forgiveness he said in Africaans: "Wat is verby verby" - "What is past is past" Mandela is Named President, Closing the Era of Apartheid Mandela is Named President, Closing the Era of Apartheid By BILL KELLER Special to The New York Times OTHER HEADLINES Kennedy Proposes Expanded Choices for Health Plan: President Praises Ideas: Senator Seeking More Options in Coverage and Exemption for Smaller Businesses Death of Suspect in Police Custody Is Called Homicide: Autopsy Led to Finding: New York Grand Jury to Weigh if Actions by Officers Were Criminal or Justified Yemenis Battle for the Control of a Major City Abortion Foes Ordered to Pay Clinic Damages The Scramble for Money: One Candidate's Struggle In Wave of Anticrime Fervor, States Rush to Adopt Laws CAPE TOWN, May 9 -- The power that had belonged to whites since they first settled on this cape 342 years ago passed today to a Parliament as diverse as any in the world, a cast of proud survivors who began their work by electing Nelson Mandela to be the first black president of South Africa

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Unopposed, Mr. Mandela was proclaimed president without a word of dissent or even a show of hands, then sat, strangely grim-faced, while his giddy followers whooped in unparliamentary delight. Ninety minutes later he appeared on a high balcony at the old Cape Town City Hall, gazed across a delirious throng toward the bay where he spent more than a third of his adult life on an island prison, and spoke his presidential theme of inclusion. 'We place our vision of a new constitutional order for South Africa on the table not as conquerors, prescribing to the conquered,' he declared, from the same perch where he first addressed his followers four years ago after he was released and the negotiated revolution began in earnest. 'We speak as fellow citizens to heal the wounds of the past with the intent of constructing a new order based on justice for all,' he said. Afterwards Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, the irrepressible Anglican Primate of Southern Africa, who serves as a kind of national toastmaster, sprang to the microphone and gleefully shrieked, 'We are free today! We are free today!' Mr.

Mandela does not become president until Tuesday when he is to be sworn in at a pageant in Pretoria, but the symbolic redefining of South Africa was already dizzily under way. Entering the Parliamentary chamber from which blacks were previously excluded, Mr. Mandela was announced by a bare-chested tribal imbongi, or praise-singer, shouting tributes to this most famous prisoner of apartheid. Before the new Parliament adjourned its maiden session, the Speaker -- for centuries a white man in a black morning coat -- was an Indian woman in a sari, Frene Ginwala, an eloquent lawyer and women's rights campaigner who found cause for celebration in the more than 70 women elected among the 400 lawmakers. Mr. Mandela entered the chamber with his arm around his predecessor, F. W. de Klerk, and settled into the brown leather seat from which Mr. de Klerk led the repeal of apartheid during the last four years. Mr. de Klerk, still president for a day, moved across the aisle to the place from which the pro-apartheid opposition used to harangue him as a traitor to his race.

In the new order, he is one of two vice presidents. Behind them the assembly fanned out in a florid display of races and costumes, white men in suits outnumbered by black women in the bright hats that are the feminine custom of the house. The Parliament is roughly a mirror of the public, which is about 75 percent black, 15 percent white, and 10 percent Indian and mixed-race. The spectacle today shattered not only the South African tradition of minority dominion but also the stereotype of liberation parliaments, for here the former prisoners were sworn in alongside their former jailers, returned exiles sat across from recycled racists, and the descendants of the system joined its victims and the next of kin. Bitter Foes Embrace All are now $55,000-a-year incumbents who will address each other as 'honorable member' in the same spirit with which Mr. Mandela bounded from his place today to embrace his Zulu nationalist rival, Chief Mangosuthu G. Buthelezi, and to pump the hand of Gen. Constandt Viljoen, parliamentary leader of the nine-member white separatist delegation.

The new legislators came forward in flights of 10 to be sworn in, each lineup containing several novels' worth of pain endured and history upended. In the first batch, together with Mr. Mandela, stood his estranged wife Winnie, the militant champion of the dispossessed and convicted kidnapper. Mr. Mandela ignored her, staring away as they pledged their devotion to the new South Africa, and ignored her again later when she sat briefly beside him to nominate the deputy Speaker. In recent weeks she has spoken of reconciliation, and he has denied it. He invited their two daughters to escort him to the main inaugural party Tuesday, but Mrs. Mandela is not on the guest list. A Display of Red Socks Sharing the first oath, too, was Joe Slovo, the Communist Party chairman and one of about 50 Communists who serve under the umbrella of Mr. Mandela's African National Congress -- allies of convenience, nothing more, Mr. Mandela always explains, but a reliable source of white anxiety. Mr. Slovo wore his trademark red socks, and on the way in hoisted his trouser legs for the TV cameras.

Another group included Ahmed Kathrada, perhaps the new order's most perfect example of whimsical reversal. Mr. Kathrada shared a cell block with Mr. Mandela on Robben Island and served as scribe and editor of illicit prison writings. Now he is Mr. Mandela's designated Minister of Correctional Services, responsible for overseeing the prison system. The African National Congress, which won 252 of the 400 seats, held its first caucus Sunday in the older parliamentary chamber where the apartheid laws were enacted and where the founding ideologist of separation, Hendrik F. Verwoerd, survived two bullets from a would-be assassin. Today the whole assembly gathered in a chamber built in 1985 for joint sessions of a tricameral parliament, an apartheid device that excluded blacks but provided houses to represent Indians and mixed-race people. Passing along the once forbidden corridors, the tortured and exiled gawked at stiffly heroic paintings of the Afrikaners who have run the country since 1948. Will the Gallery Change? 'I hope some of the portraits that are hanging here will be taken to the museum so that there really will be a change,' said Gen.

Bantu Holomisa, the former dictator of the Transkei homeland, elected on Mr. Mandela's ticket. 'I'm excited like a young boy,' said Cyril Ramaphosa, the African National Congress's chief negotiator and party leader, who eschewed a Cabinet post after being passed over for a vice-presidency but showed no sign of depression today. 'This is a Parliament we've been storming all these years and finally, through negotiations, the doors are open and we are walking in very majestically.' By the end of the week Mr. Mandela is expected to have a full complement of 27 Cabinet ministers, and by June the Parliament should be at work on his first budget. De Klerk's Choices for Cabinet Mr. de Klerk today announced the six members of his party who will be included in the unity Cabinet, including Roelof F. Botha, the world's longest serving Foreign Minister, who will take over the mining portfolio, Roelf Meyer, the party's chief negotiator, who will handle constitutional issues and relations with the provinces, and Derek Keys, who retains his post as Finance Minister. Mr. Mandela announced most of the Cabinet choices from his own party last week.

Leaders of Chief Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party said today that they would accept three posts in the new Cabinet, joining the unity Government despite months of insisting that the Constitution was fatally flawed. The only determined outsider in the new panoply was General Viljoen, who ran in hope of winning the Afrikaners an independent homeland by fighting from the inside. Asked what would be his role in the new Parliament, he declared: 'Opposition, of course. There is no other way.' Nelson Mandela | Biography, Life, Death, & Facts | Britannica.com Nelson Mandela Alternative Titles: Madiba Mandela, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela Nelson Mandela Joe Slovo Nelson Mandela, in full Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, byname Madiba (born July 18, 1918, Mvezo, South Africa—died December 5, 2013, Johannesburg), black nationalist and the first black president of South Africa (1994–99). His negotiations in the early 1990s with South African Pres. F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and ushered in a peaceful transition to majority rule.

Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts. Nelson Mandela. Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz Early life and work Nelson Mandela was the son of Chief Henry Mandela of the Madiba clan of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people. After his father’s death, young Nelson was raised by Jongintaba, the regent of the Tembu. Nelson renounced his claim to the chieftainship to become a lawyer. He attended South African Native College (later the University of Fort Hare) and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand; he later passed the qualification exam to become a lawyer. In 1944 he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black-liberation group, and became a leader of its Youth League. That same year he met and married Evelyn Ntoko Mase. Mandela subsequently held other ANC leadership positions, through which he helped revitalize the organization and oppose the apartheid policies of the ruling National Party .

In 1952 in Johannesburg , with fellow ANC leader Oliver Tambo , Mandela established South Africa’s first black law practice, specializing in cases resulting from the post-1948 apartheid legislation. Also that year, Mandela played an important role in launching a campaign of defiance against South Africa’s pass laws, which required nonwhites to carry documents (known as passes, pass books, or reference books) authorizing their presence in areas that the government deemed “restricted” (i.e., generally reserved for the white population). He traveled throughout the country as part of the campaign, trying to build support for nonviolent means of protest against the discriminatory laws. In 1955 he was involved in drafting the Freedom Charter , a document calling for nonracial social democracy in South Africa. Mandela’s antiapartheid activism made him a frequent target of the authorities. Starting in 1952, he was intermittently banned (severely restricted in travel, association, and speech). In December 1956 he was arrested with more than 100 other people on charges of treason that were designed to harass antiapartheid activists.

Mandela went on trial that same year and eventually was acquitted in 1961. During the extended court proceedings, he divorced his first wife and married Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela ( Winnie Madikizela-Mandela ). Underground activity and the Rivonia Trial Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent After the massacre of unarmed black South Africans by police forces at Sharpeville in 1960 and the subsequent banning of the ANC, Mandela abandoned his nonviolent stance and began advocating acts of sabotage against the South African regime. He went underground (during which time he became known as the Black Pimpernel for his ability to evade capture) and was one of the founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the military wing of the ANC. In 1962 he went to Algeria for training in guerrilla warfare and sabotage, returning to South Africa later that year. On August 5, shortly after his return, Mandela was arrested at a road block in Natal ; he was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.

In October 1963 the imprisoned Mandela and several other men were tried for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy in the infamous Rivonia Trial, named after a fashionable suburb of Johannesburg where raiding police had discovered quantities of arms and equipment at the headquarters of the underground Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela’s speech from the dock, in which he admitted the truth of some of the charges made against him, was a classic defense of liberty and defiance of tyranny . (His speech garnered international attention and acclaim and was published later that year as I Am Prepared to Die.) On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, narrowly escaping the death penalty. Nelson Mandela in prison on Robben Island, off Cape Town. Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Structures of Government: Fact or Fiction? From 1964 to 1982 Mandela was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town . He was subsequently kept at the maximum-security Pollsmoor Prison until 1988, when, after being treated for tuberculosis , he was transferred to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl .

The South African government periodically made conditional offers of freedom to Mandela, most notably in 1976, on the condition that he recognize the newly independent—and highly controversial—status of the Transkei Bantustan and agree to reside there. An offer made in 1985 required that he renounce the use of violence. Mandela refused both offers, the second on the premise that only free men were able to engage in such negotiations and, as a prisoner, he was not a free man. Nelson Mandela speaking from his jail cell (1964) in this video from the apartheid era that … Stock footage courtesy The WPA Film Library A replica of the Robben Island cell in which Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, at the Nelson Mandela … Rodger Bosch/MediaClubSouthAfrica.com ( Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Throughout his incarceration, Mandela retained wide support among South Africa’s black population, and his imprisonment became a cause célèbre among the international community that condemned apartheid . As South Africa’s political situation deteriorated after 1983, and particularly after 1988, he was engaged by ministers of Pres. P.W.

Botha ’s government in exploratory negotiations; he met with Botha’s successor, de Klerk , in December 1989. On February 11, 1990, the South African government under President de Klerk released Mandela from prison. Shortly after his release, Mandela was chosen deputy president of the ANC ; he became president of the party in July 1991. Mandela led the ANC in negotiations with de Klerk to end apartheid and bring about a peaceful transition to nonracial democracy in South Africa. Presidency and retirement In April 1994 the Mandela-led ANC won South Africa’s first elections by universal suffrage, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as president of the country’s first multiethnic government. He established in 1995 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which investigated human rights violations under apartheid, and he introduced housing, education, and economic development initiatives designed to improve the living standards of the country’s black population. In 1996 he oversaw the enactment of a new democratic constitution.

Mandela resigned his post with the ANC in December 1997, transferring leadership of the party to his designated successor, Thabo Mbeki . Mandela and Madikizela-Mandela had divorced in 1996, and in 1998 Mandela married Graca Machel , the widow of Samora Machel , the former Mozambican president and leader of Frelimo . Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google Nelson Mandela’s Childhood and Education Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, into a royal family of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe in the South African village of Mvezo, where his father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (c. 1880-1928), served as chief. His mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of Mphakanyiswa’s four wives, who together bore him nine daughters and four sons.

After the death of his father in 1927, 9-year-old Mandela—then known by his birth name, Rolihlahla—was adopted by Jongintaba Dalindyebo, a high-ranking Thembu regent who began grooming his young ward for a role within the tribal leadership. Did You Know? As a sign of respect, many South Africans referred to Nelson Mandela as Madiba, his Xhosa clan name. The first in his family to receive a formal education, Mandela completed his primary studies at a local missionary school. There, a teacher dubbed him Nelson as part of a common practice of giving African students English names. He went on to attend the Clarkebury Boarding Institute and Healdtown, a Methodist secondary school, where he excelled in boxing and track as well as academics. In 1939 Mandela entered the elite University of Fort Hare, the only Western-style higher learning institute for South African blacks at the time. The following year, he and several other students, including his friend and future business partner Oliver Tambo (1917-1993), were sent home for participating in a boycott against university policies.

After learning that his guardian had arranged a marriage for him, Mandela fled to Johannesburg and worked first as a night watchman and then as a law clerk while completing his bachelor’s degree by correspondence. He studied law at the University of Witwatersrand, where he became involved in the movement against racial discrimination and forged key relationships with black and white activists. In 1944, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) and worked with fellow party members, including Oliver Tambo, to establish its youth league, the ANCYL. That same year, he met and married his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase (1922-2004), with whom he had four children before their divorce in 1957. Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress Nelson Mandela’s commitment to politics and the ANC grew stronger after the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, which introduced a formal system of racial classification and segregation—apartheid—that restricted nonwhites’ basic rights and barred them from government while maintaining white minority rule.

The following year, the ANC adopted the ANCYL’s plan to achieve full citizenship for all South Africans through boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and other nonviolent methods. Mandela helped lead the ANC’s 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws, traveling across the country to organize protests against discriminatory policies, and promoted the manifesto known as the Freedom Charter, ratified by the Congress of the People in 1955. Also in 1952, Mandela and Tambo opened South Africa’s first black law firm, which offered free or low-cost legal counsel to those affected by apartheid legislation. On December 5, 1956, Mandela and 155 other activists were arrested and went on trial for treason. All of the defendants were acquitted in 1961, but in the meantime tensions within the ANC escalated, with a militant faction splitting off in 1959 to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). The next year, police opened fire on peaceful black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people; as panic, anger and riots swept the country in the massacre’s aftermath, the apartheid government banned both the ANC and the PAC.

Forced to go underground and wear disguises to evade detection, Mandela decided that the time had come for a more radical approach than passive resistance. Nelson Mandela and the Armed Resistance Movement In 1961, Nelson Mandela co-founded and became the first leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), also known as MK, a new armed wing of the ANC. Several years later, during the trial that would put him behind bars for nearly three decades, he described the reasoning for this radical departure from his party’s original tenets: “[I]t would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and nonviolence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle.” Under Mandela’s leadership, MK launched a sabotage campaign against the government, which had recently declared South Africa a republic and withdrawn from the British Commonwealth. In January 1962, Mandela traveled abroad illegally to attend a conference of African nationalist leaders in Ethiopia, visit the exiled Oliver Tambo in London and undergo guerilla training in Algeria.

On August 5, shortly after his return, he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to five years in prison for leaving the country and inciting a 1961 workers’ strike. The following July, police raided an ANC hideout in Rivonia, a suburb on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and arrested a racially diverse group of MK leaders who had gathered to debate the merits of a guerilla insurgency. Evidence was found implicating Mandela and other activists, who were brought to stand trial for sabotage, treason and violent conspiracy alongside their associates. Mandela and seven other defendants narrowly escaped the gallows and were instead sentenced to life imprisonment during the so-called Rivonia Trial, which lasted eight months and attracted substantial international attention. In a stirring opening statement that sealed his iconic status around the world, Mandela admitted to some of the charges against him while defending the ANC’s actions and denouncing the injustices of apartheid. He ended with the following words: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.

But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Nelson Mandela’s Years Behind Bars Nelson Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island Prison, a former leper colony off the coast of Cape Town, where he was confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing and compelled to do hard labor in a lime quarry. As a black political prisoner, he received scantier rations and fewer privileges than other inmates. He was only allowed to see his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (1936-), who he had married in 1958 and was the mother of his two young daughters, once every six months. Mandela and his fellow prisoners were routinely subjected to inhumane punishments for the slightest of offenses; among other atrocities, there were reports of guards burying inmates in the ground up to their necks and urinating on them. These restrictions and conditions notwithstanding, while in confinement Mandela earned a bachelor of law degree from the University of London and served as a mentor to his fellow prisoners, encouraging them to seek better treatment through nonviolent resistance.

He also smuggled out political statements and a draft of his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” published five years after his release. Despite his forced retreat from the spotlight, Mandela remained the symbolic leader of the antiapartheid movement. In 1980 Oliver Tambo introduced a “Free Nelson Mandela” campaign that made the jailed leader a household name and fueled the growing international outcry against South Africa’s racist regime. As pressure mounted, the government offered Mandela his freedom in exchange for various political compromises, including the renouncement of violence and recognition of the “independent” Transkei Bantustan, but he categorically rejected these deals. In 1982 Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland, and in 1988 he was placed under house arrest on the grounds of a minimum-security correctional facility. The following year, newly elected president F. W. de Klerk (1936-) lifted the ban on the ANC and called for a nonracist South Africa, breaking with the conservatives in his party. On February 11, 1990, he ordered Mandela’s release.

Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa After attaining his freedom, Nelson Mandela led the ANC in its negotiations with the governing National Party and various other South African political organizations for an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. Though fraught with tension and conducted against a backdrop of political instability, the talks earned Mandela and de Klerk the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1993. On April 26, 1994, more than 22 million South Africans turned out to cast ballots in the country’s first multiracial parliamentary elections in history. An overwhelming majority chose the ANC to lead the country, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as the first black president of South Africa, with de Klerk serving as his first deputy. As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights and political violations committed by both supporters and opponents of apartheid between 1960 and 1994. He also introduced numerous social and economic programs designed to improve the living standards of South Africa’s black population.

In 1996 Mandela presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution, which established a strong central government based on majority rule and prohibited discrimination against minorities, including whites. Improving race relations, discouraging blacks from retaliating against the white minority and building a new international image of a united South Africa were central to President Mandela’s agenda. To these ends, he formed a multiracial “Government of National Unity” and proclaimed the country a “rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.” In a gesture seen as a major step toward reconciliation, he encouraged blacks and whites alike to rally around the predominantly Afrikaner national rugby team when South Africa hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. On his 80th birthday in 1998, Mandela wed the politician and humanitarian Graça Machel (1945-), widow of the former president of Mozambique. (His marriage to Winnie had ended in divorce in 1992.) The following year, he retired from politics at the end of his first term as president and was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki (1942-) of the ANC.

Nelson Mandela’s Later Years and Legacy After leaving office, Nelson Mandela remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own country and around the world. He established a number of organizations, including the influential Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Elders, an independent group of public figures committed to addressing global problems and easing human suffering. In 2002, Mandela became a vocal advocate of AIDS awareness and treatment programs in a culture where the epidemic had been cloaked in stigma and ignorance. The disease later claimed the life of his son Makgatho (1950-2005) and is believed to affect more people in South Africa than in any other country. Treated for prostate cancer in 2001 and weakened by other health issues, Mandela grew increasingly frail in his later years and scaled back his schedule of public appearances. In 2009, the United Nations declared July 18 “Nelson Mandela International Day” in recognition of the South African leader’s contributions to democracy, freedom, peace and human rights around the world. Nelson Mandela died on December 5, 2013 from a recurring lung infection.

Tags Nelson Mandela inaugurated - May 10, 1994 - HISTORY.com Nelson Mandela inaugurated Publisher A+E Networks In South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is sworn in as the first black president of South Africa. In his inaugural address, Mandela, who spent 27 years of his life as a political prisoner of the South African government, declared that “the time for the healing of the wounds has come.” Two weeks earlier, more than 22 million South Africans had turned out to cast ballots in the country’s first-ever multiracial parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) party to lead the country. Mandela, born in 1918, was the son of the chief of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people. Instead of succeeding his father as chief, Mandela went to university and became a lawyer. In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black political organization dedicated to winning rights for the black majority in white-ruled South Africa. In 1948, the racist National Party came to power, and apartheid–South Africa’s institutionalized system of white supremacy and racial segregation–became official government policy.

With the loss of black rights under apartheid, black enrollment in the ANC rapidly grew. Mandela became one of the ANC’s leaders and in 1952 was made deputy national president of the ANC. He organized nonviolent strikes, boycotts, marches, and other acts of civil disobedience. After the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960, Nelson helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in acts of sabotage against the white minority government. He was tried for and acquitted of treason in 1961 but in 1962 was arrested again for illegally leaving the country. Convicted and sentenced to five years at Robben Island Prison, he was put on trial again in 1963 with seven others on charges of sabotage, treason, and conspiracy. In the celebrated Rivonia Trial, named after the suburb of Johannesburg where ANC weapons were found, Mandela eloquently defended his actions. On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island Prison.

He was confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing and was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He could write and receive a letter once every six months, and once a year he was allowed to meet with a visitor for 30 minutes. However, Mandela’s resolve remained unbroken, and while remaining the symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid movement, he led a movement of civil disobedience at the prison that coerced South African officials into drastically improving conditions on Robben Island. In 1982 he was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland, and in 1988 to a cottage, where he lived under house arrest. In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South African president and set about dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and on February 11, 1990, ordered the release of Nelson Mandela. Mandela subsequently led the ANC in its negotiations with the minority government for an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

On April 26, 1994, the country’s first free elections were won by Mandela and the ANC, and a “national unity” coalition was formed with de Klerk’s National Party and the Zulus’ Inkatha Freedom Party. On May 10, Mandela was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by numerous international dignitaries. As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights violations under apartheid and introduced numerous initiatives designed to improve the living standards of South Africa’s black population. In 1996, he presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution. Mandela retired from politics in June 1999 at the age of 80. He was succeeded as president by Thabo Mbeki of the ANC, but remained a global advocate for peace and social justice until his death in December 2013. Related Videos The New Democratic Republic of South Africa - South African History The New Democratic Republic of South Africa Only months after taking up office, Frederik Willem de Klerk rang in the end of Apartheid in an historic speech in Parliament in February 1990, and declared himself in favour of a democratic South Africa.

The ANC was unbanned. Some days later, Nelson Mandela, the President of the ANC, was released from prison on Robben Island, after 27 years behind bars. Earlier, in secret negotiations the ANC and the government had agreed to refrain from violence and work for a peaceful transition and a new constitution. The process of rapprochement was slow in the beginning, particularly because of differences and power struggles between the Xhosa-dominated ANC and the Zulu-led Inkatha Freedom Party, resulting in violence in the townships. In the meantime, de Klerk had to deal with growing criticism from his own National Party. To counter that, he had his policy confirmed in a referendum voted on by the white population. Almost 70 per cent supported a continuation of the reforms. After a further two turbulent years, eventually a new constitution was drafted. In April 1994, the first democratic elections were held in South Africa. As expected, the ANC gained the overwhelming majority. Nelson Mandela was inaugurated on the 10th of May 1994 as the first black African President of the New South Africa. The first Vice-President was Thabo Mbeki. F.W.

de Klerk, whose National Party had gained 20 per cent of the votes, became second Vice-President of the Interim Government. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela retired in 1999. Thabo Mbeki, his First Vice President, became president of the ANC and President of the Republic of South Africa. The ANC got almost a two third majority of the votes in those elections. Mbeki's style of government was progressively seen as been autocratic. And his desastrous stand on two of the most pressing problems of the country, AIDS and the regime in neighboring Zimbabwe, earned him critique in large parts of the population. When Mbeki suspended his vice president, Jacob Zuma, who was facing prosecution for rape, corruption and racketeering, the resistence against him grew tremendously, especially among the youngsters in the ANC Youth League, who are Zuma's most ardent followers. Photos: Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk (from left to right). Bottom: Jacob Zuma, Mosiuoa Lekota and Helen Zille.

At the ANC convention in Polokwane on December 16, 2007, the populist Zuma was elected new party president and thereby automatically as candidate for the presidency of the country. Some months later Mbeki was pressurised into resigning from the office of State President. In the meantime, an opposition party has formed under the leadership of former defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota. Numerous intelligent people are gathered in its ranks, mostly from the ANC, who are willing to fight corruption and restore democracy. They often appear in newspapers, but are virtually banned from TV. Taking the state of education of the vast majority of the South African population into account, COPE does not stand a chance against the ANC in the elections later this year, also not in a coalition with the DA (Democratic Alliance), a mostly white party around Cape Town's famous mayoress Helen Zille. - It looks like Zuma will become president. He still has to stand trial on charges of corruption and racketeering. He gives the overall impression of regarding democratic values not highly.

He is relatively uneducated, sucks up to the left wingers, at the same time leads a traditional life with a big collection of wifes - the latest added only weeks ago - and is prone to violence talk and to bullying minorities. Many South Africans fear for the future. Southern Domain Online Travel Guides. All rights reserved. eMail info@southafrica-travel.net .

Nelson Mandela dead: South Africa's first black president and anti-apartheid icon dies at 95 | The Independent Africa Nelson Mandela dead: South Africa's first black president and anti-apartheid icon dies at 95 South African president Jacob Zuma confirmed the news in a statement saying the nation 'had lost its greatest son' Friday 6 December 2013 03:30 BST Click to follow Nelson Mandela dead: South Africa's first black president and anti-apartheid icon dies at 95 1/10 Nelson Mandela and his then-wife Winnie raising their fists and saluting cheering crowd upon Mandela's release from the Victor Verster prison near Paarl GETTY IMAGES 2/10 South African police vehicles are parked outside the house of former South African president Nelson Mandela following his death in Johannesburg on December 5, 2013 AFP/Getty Images 3/10 Dec 7, 2005: Nelson Mandela at 87 at the Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg, where he met with the winner and runner-up of the local "Idols" competition AP Photo/Denis Farrell 4/10 February 10, 2010: The statue Nelson Mandela outside

 the Groot Drakenstein prison near the town of Franschhoek, South Africa, where Mandela was released on Feb.

11, 1990 AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam 5/10 Nelson Mandela waves to the crowd at Soccer City stadium during the closing ceremony for the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg Reuters 6/10 July 11, 2010: Italian land artist Dario Gambarin's gigantic portrait of Mandela, ploughed by Gambarin in a country field of 27,000 square meters, in Castagnaro, Italy.

Gambarin made the portrait to mark the end of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa AP 7/10 Zinzi Mandela, daughter of Nelson Mandela, wearing Xhosa traditional outfit, and her father Nelson, smile, 26 October 1992 in Soweto, after Zinzi married Zweli Hlongwane AFP/Getty Images 8/10 Nelson Mandela addresses at a funeral of 12 people died during the township unrests in Soweto, 20 September 1990 AFP/Getty Images 9/10 Circa 1964: Nelson Mandela, then President of the African National Congress (left) in discussion with C Andrews, a Cape Town teacher AFP/Getty Images South African president Nelson Mandela speaks at a conference in the early 1960s Getty Images/Hulton Archive Nelson Mandela and his then-wife Winnie raising their fists and saluting cheering crowd upon Mandela's release from the Victor Verster prison near Paarl Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and the man widely seen as the architect of a peaceful transition to democracy after three centuries of apartheid rule, has died at his home in the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton. He was 95.

Mr Mandela had been receiving home-based intensive care after being discharged from hospital in September. The South African president Jacob Zuma confirmed the news in a statement broadcast live on national television. He said Mr Mandela had "departed" and was now at peace. He said South Africa had lost its greatest son and its people had lost a father. "His tireless struggle for freedom earned him the respect of the world. His humility, his compassion and his humanity earned him their love," he said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mandela family. To them, we owe a debt of gratitude. "They have sacrificed much and endured much so that our people could be free." British Prime Minister David Cameron paid tribute to Mr Mandela tweeting: "A great light has gone out in the world. Nelson Mandela was a hero of our time. I've asked for the flag at No10 to be flown at half mast.'' President Barack Obama said the day Mr Mandela was released from prison had given him a sense of "what a human being can do when they're guided by their hopes and not by their fears". "I cannot imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set," he said.

"As long as I live, I will do what I can to learn from him." Mr Obama thanked the Mandela family for sharing "this extraordinary man" with the rest of the world. He said Mr Mandela's legacy of a "free South Africa at peace with itself" was an example to the world. "We will not likely see the likes of Nelson Mandela again." "He no longer belongs to us, he belongs to the ages", Mr Obama added. Mr Mandela had been discharged at the start of September after spending 87 days in hospital – his fourth admission since December 2012 – and had remained in a “critical and at times unstable” condition while receiving intensive care at his home. He had been vulnerable to respiratory problems since contracting tuberculosis during his imprisonment under apartheid. But over the last year his condition had significantly worsened with a recurring lung infection the latest of his ailments.

Question: Who was the first black President of South Africa?
Answer: Nelson Mandela