Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and statesman who became the country first democratically elected president, serving from 1994 to 1999. A leading figure in the African National Congress from the 1940s, he initially organized nonviolent resistance to South apartheid system of racial segregation before co-founding an armed wing of the movement in response to escalating state violence, and was arrested and convicted of sabotage in 1964, spending 27 years in prison, most of it on Robben Island. Released in 1990 amid the negotiated end of apartheid, he led the African National Congress in talks with the white minority government that produced South first fully democratic elections in 1994, in which he was elected president, and he shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with President F. W. de Klerk for that negotiated transition. As president he emphasized national reconciliation over retribution, and he remains a global symbol of resistance to racial oppression and of reconciliation after conflict.