Nelson Mandela Research Paper

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Nelson Mandela – Rolihlahla Mandela

Rolihlahla Mandela was an important South African leader working for civil rights and equality. Mandela was born in Mvezo, South Africa on the 18th of July 1918. His birth name was Rolihlahla but at the age of 6 his schoolteacher gave him the name of ‘Nelson’. Nelson Mandela help brought an end to apartheid and encouraged a multiethnic government to oversee the country’s transition. After 5 years of changes in government and society Mandela retired from politics. He remained a devoted champion around the world for peace and social justice until his death in 2013.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a major civil rights activist that contributed to social justice and equality around the world. He went to great …show more content…

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was sentence to life imprisonment for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy however he only spent 27 years in prison before he was given his freedom. He spent the first 18 of 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island prison, a former leper colony off the coast of Cape Town. His living conditions were harsh because he was a black political prisoner. He had a small cell without a bed or plumbing and was compelled to do hard work in a lime quarry. He also received scantier rations and fewer privileges than other inmates. While locked away Mandela earned a bachelor of law degree from the university of London and served as a mentor to his following prisoners, encouraging them to seek better treatment through nonviolent resistance. During his imprisonment he was still the symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid movement. In 1980 Oliver Tambo created a campaign to help free Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela from prison. The campaign was called “Free Nelson Mandela” and as the pressure from this campaign grew the government opened an offer. They offered Mandela his freedom for a various political comprises but they declined. In 1982 Mandela was moved prisons to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland and in 1988 he was placed under house arrest. In 1989 Frederik Willem de Klerk was elected as president and called for a non-racist South Africa, breaking the conservatives in his