Research Paper On Nelson Mandela

The Sixties was a time of revolutionary ideas and new modes of expression. As millions of South Africans endured a physical and social landscape of white supremacy, freedom movements promoting social reform all over the nation was prevalent. The hypocrisy of what was called a democracy was not only actively and openly being challenged but to an extent successfully being recognized by the white South African minority. The Apartheid mantra of racial separation was not new to South Africa, but its political legitimacy in 1948 was the beginning of an overwhelming amount of entrenched systemic racism. By the 1960s, millions of economically and socially segregated Africans in the region began expressing their disdain for the white minority rule through

Born into a country where racial identity determines the fate of its citizens, Nelson Mandela spent a lifetime fighting for a country in which all its people would be equal. Advocating in Africa for the Euro-North American modernist project of emancipation in the early Sixties, Nelson Mandela provided a model of how to liberate a country from apartheid colonialism. Overcoming personal loss, repression, and three decades of incarceration, he continued his efforts and emerge as a moral and political victor when the South African apartheid collapsed in the early 1990s. It is Nelson Mandela’s lifelong dedication to the struggle to set his people free that has made him an iconic figure in world history. His political career spanning over sixty years devoted to freedom and peace has asserted him beyond a domestic hero as an embodiment of fundamental human qualities for global audiences. The formation, climax, and establishment of Nelson Mandela 's transformation into a global icon in world history is a result of his social and political commitment to values of solidarity, reconciliation, democracy, and human

Despite Mandela’s public absence, his time in prison (1962-1990) was a catalyst for his iconic process. Mandela 's iconic formation was able to develop during imprisonment only because the foundations for it had already been laid. The Apartheid was an ideology supported by the National Party (NP) government in South Africa that was introduced in 1948. It called for the separate development of the different racial groups in South Africa. The laws forced different racial groups to live separately and develop separately, in grossly unequal conditions. Apartheid was unique in that it made the social culture of racial segregation in South Africa more enforced than it already was through legislation when the Afrikaner Nationalist Party came to power in 1948. Anti-Apartheid movements in the late 1950’s and early 1960s took many forms domestically and to an extent internationally. In 1959, a boycott campaign started by exiled South African anti-Apartheid activists took place in England with aim of influencing and not overthrowing the South African government through sanctions of South African goods. However, an otherwise peaceful tactic towards reform was transformed by the shootings at Sharpeville, a police led massacre of peaceful protesters killing 69 and wounding 181. This situation, led to