Nelson Mandela

 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (/maen'del@Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela Xhosa [xolilala mande:la]; 18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist who was the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. Mandela was also the first black president of South Africa and the first to be elected in an election that was democratically-conducted. The administration he headed was focused on encouraging reconciliation as well as removing the legacy of apartheid. He was a socialist and an African nationalist from 1991 until 1997. Before he became an Johannesburg lawyer, he studied law at the University of Fort Hare as well as the University of Witwatersrand. He was involved in anticolonial politics as well as African nationalist politics there. He joined the ANC in 1943 and also helped in the formation of its Youth League in 1944. Mandela and the ANC pledged to take down apartheid's only white-only government, known as the National Party. He was appointed president of the ANC's Transvaal branch and rose to fame for his participation in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was frequently detained for seditious activity and was not prosecuted in the 1956 Treason trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP). He was initially committed to peaceful protest , but with the SACP and the SACP, he formed the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe and led a sabotage operation against the government. In 1962 the year he was arrested in custody and sentenced to life in prison.