Nelson Mandela is one of the most recognizable human rights symbols of the twentieth century. Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as the President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country’s first black head of state, and the first elected president in a fully representative democratic election.
Mandela was born into the Madiba clan on 18th July 1918. Son of a chief, Nelson Mandela studied law and became one of South Africa’s first black lawyers.
Early in the 1950s, he was elected as leader of the youth wing of the African National Congress, a liberation movement. In 1962, he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela became a powerful symbol of resistance for the rising anti-apartheid movement. Widely regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 260 honours.
Nelson Mandela shared the Peace Prize with the man who had released him, Frederik Willem de Klerk, the then South African President in 1993. Mandela died on 5th December, 2013.
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