Nelson Mandela Research Paper

Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa In 1994. The amazing life of South African ground-breaking, President Nelson Mandela takes a long journey to equal rights. Though he had humble beginnings as a herd boy in a rural village, Mandela became involved in the anti-apartheid movement and co-founded the African National Congress (ANC). His Actions led him into jail on Robben Island from 1964 to 1990. After surviving a long prison sentence all in the name of freedom and equal rights, 27 years later a worldwide campaign pushed for his release, which was granted in 1990 among rising civil conflict. He then joined President F. W. de Klerk to stop the violence in South Africa and start his elections in 1994, in which he led

Slowly Nelson's political life grew and his family life dropped. Nelson and his good friend, Oliver Tambo opened a law firm, which took up most of Nelson's time. Evelyn mother and wife of two of Nelson's children, but they gradually grew apart. Leading him to meet a young woman named Winnie after some time they got married. She gave birth to two more of Nelson's children. As time passed, Nelson's spirit for freedom grew more and more each day. Soon the South African government was becoming agitated with him and the ANC. The government then set out to find Nelson and the ANC forcing him to leave Winnie. After he left he went to a safe house and started his plan on retaliating against the South African government by destroying electrical substations and factories. In 1962, him and his colleagues was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life in prison. At this point in the movie I was shocked on how I never knew who Nelson Mandela was, and how good of a movie this really was. Nelson Mandela was sent to Robben Island for twenty- seven years in prison. Nelson was in the poorest living conditions possible at the prison. While he was severing his time in prison Mandela became widely known in South

colleagues because he knew they would not approve. Once the Government and Mr. Mandela decided they could do business with each other, he was moved to a beautiful house with a swimming pool, garden, personal chef, VCR and tailor-made suit for meetings with Government people. As the years past with him in prison, Winnie's transformation began. She grew into a figure who resolved to fight her husband's imprisonment while championing the cause he came to symbolize: the freedom of black South Africans from white oppression. She too was sent to prison for eighteen months in solitary confinement in a cement chamber it looked like with no mattress. Toward the end of the movie, it starts to cut around with him in meetings, growing older and winning the election for president. The film ended with a great seen of him walking through the halls being saluted by white men as he walks out to great all of South Africa. I’m ashamed to say that when I started watching this movie I knew very little about Nelson Mandela. In fact, the only facts that I knew about him was that he was once the president of South Africa and that he had been a political prisoner. Mandela surely lived a very fascinating life, and I really enjoyed getting to learn about his early life in a tribal environment, and then his education and opportunities in a