Nelson Mandela was born on July 18th, 1918 in Mvezo, Cape province, South Africa. During Mandela’s early years, he was educated as a lawyer in Johannesburg. One of his first major accomplishments was being a co-founder of the Youth League under the African National Congress during the 1950s. In the 1950s, Mandela was heavily involved in the ANC’s Transvaal branch and in the 1952 anti-apartheid Defiance Campaign, which resulted in his arrest by law enforcement for opposing the apartheid regime. After this event, Mandela was arrested for being a member of the South African Communist Party and by forming the paramilitary organization—Umkhonto we Sizwe—that attempted to overthrow the government. This resulted in the Rivonia Trial and a sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964: “Mandela and his colleagues are sentenced to life imprisonment.” After 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela was released by President F. W. de Klerk, which resulted in a major political alliance that ended apartheid in …show more content…
South Africa had been a deeply racist and apartheid country for many years, which defines the radical shift in racist governmental policies in the democratization of voting and elections that Mandela inspired during the early 1990s: “In the likes of Mandela, the anti-apartheid hero, who volunteer to suffer persecutions and abuse in the course of liberating their people.” During this time, it became evident that Mandela had achieved a massive victory for his people, which signaled the downfall a racist regime in South African politics. Surely, this is one of the major accomplishments of Mandela’s political career that made a significant historical figure in the fight against apartheid in the late 20th century. Mandela’s presidency was a major historical event that brought the end to apartheid in South