This Day in History: February 11
It isn’t Valentine’s Day, but February 11th is a very special date. It might not be a national holiday here, but it is a celebration amongst South Africans. Thirty years ago, on February 11, 1990, South Africa’s famed activist Nelson Mandela was released from prison after being incarcerated for twenty-seven years. Now you may think, “Who’s Nelson Mandela? Why are we celebrating some guy who got out of jail?” Well, Nelson Mandela is a political leader and revolutionary who led the movement to end apartheid, or racial segregation in South Africa lasting from the late 1940s to the early 90s. You can think of him as our Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, only those guys didn’t end up as President.
Rolihlahla “Nelson” Mandela was born on July 18, 1918 in the village of Mvezo, in the Eastern Cape. His father was a counselor for the acting king of the Thembu natives, Jongintaba Dalindyebo. In 1930, Nelson’s father died while he became a student of Dalindyebo at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni, where he developed an appreciation for his race and aspired to contribute to the freedom of his people.
After graduating Healdtown, a secondary school, he began studying for a Bachelor of Arts at Fort Hare, but was expelled for participating in a student protest, showing his ambition to become an activist at an early age. The king was angered that his student was expelled so he threatened to arrange Mandela’s marriage. Instead, Mandela and his cousin, Justice, escaped to Johannesburg in 1941, and began jobs as a mine security officer. He completed his BA at the University of South Africa but went to Fort Hare for graduation in 1943.
In 1944, Mandela joined the African National Congress and helped form the ANC Youth League (ANCYL). Under his control, the ANCYL grew throughout the years and influenced the ANC into accepting and adopting the Programme of Action, a more radical, mass-based policy, in 1949. Throughout the 1950s he practiced law, starting Mandela and Tambo in 1952 with Oliver Tambo, in South Africa, where the ANCYL began a campaign of disobedience against six unjust laws.
In December of 1956, Mandela and several others were arrested under the accusation of treason, as he and the others were found defying the government’s Suppression of Communism Act. The trial lasted for four years, with Mandela and the others being released and acquitted in the early 1960s. He began secretly planning national strikes. However, due to the country turning to a state of national security, the strikes were temporarily abandoned. Mandela was chosen to lead the armed struggle against the government, and visited England and various other countries to gain support.
On August 5, 1962, he was arrested and charged with leaving South Africa with a fake permit. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but when his colleagues were arrested one year after his own capture, Mandela was tried in October of 1963 for sabotage, and found guilty.
After twenty-seven years, Nelson Mandela was released. During this time South Africa was politically changing, and eventually he became president in 1994. His term ended in 1999, and he passed away on December 5, 2013, at the age of ninety-five.
