Nelson Mandela

A detailed Summary of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his winning release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was involved in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is respected everywhere as a very important force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. Long Walk to Freedom is his moving and exciting autobiography. In this book, for the first time, Nelson Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life, an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph, which has, until now, been practically unknown to most of the world. Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, bound to happen reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of op

Mandela's "long walk to freedom" didn't really begin until he became a practicing attorney in Johannesburg. His childhood home was a grass hut with a dirt floor, but his schooling didn't begin until he was taken in by a well-to-do guardian and benefactor. He first became aware of the white man's suppression of his people in South Africa when he left school to work in a Johannesburg law office. He learned then that his country harbored many different ethnic and racial groups: the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress, the Communist Party, the Afrikaners (people of Dutch descent), the African National Congress (AFC), all under the thumb of the white National Party. The government was out to "...preserve the status quo where three million whites owned 87 percent of the land, and relegate the eight million Africans to the remaining 13 percent." But it was the AFC (organized in 1912) that Mandela became a part of. Although he didn't always agree with the communists in the group, he did subscribe to Marx's basic dictum: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs." Also Mandela followed Gandhi's non-violent defense, until the National policy on apartheid (segregation) prompted him to create the MK. It was a branch of the AFC which was designed to commit acts of sabotage, so long as no one was killed. That was one of the charges held against several members of the AFC in the Rivonia Trial. From the offset, the U.N. Security Coun

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Approximate Word count = 997
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: People