Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born July 18, 1918 in Umtata, South Africa. He is known most notably for being the first President of South Africa to be voted in a fully democratic election. He is also noted as an anti-apartheid activist who spent twenty-seven years in jail for the planning of underground armed resistance—a last resort Mandela reluctantly undertook. He spent the majority of his term in a cell on Robben Island.

Mandela was the first of his family to attend school, where he was given the name Nelson by a Methodist teacher. (It was in honor of the British admiral Horatio Nelson.) Nelson’s father died of tuberculosis when he was only nine, and Mandela was informally adopted by the Thembu king Jongintaba. His father was instrumental in the rise of Jongintaba to the throne, and Mandela’s adoption was in acknowledgement of that debt. However, Mandela and the king’s son Justice, soon ran away from home when they learned Jongintaba had arranged marriages for them. Mandela found sporadic work as a mine guard and a law clerk.

Mandela became politically active from very early on aligning with the political party African National Congress (ANC). He was a prominent part of the 1952 Defiance Campaign, which was an ANC led anti-apartheid movement. He was also instrumental in the 1955 Congress of the People. Mandela and his friend Oliver Tambo founded and operated the law firm Mandela and Tombo which provided pro bono or cheap legal services to those who otherwise couldn’t afford representation.

Mandela's political approach was influenced by Gandhi, who inspired him and succeeding generations of South African ant-apartheid activists.

On December 5, 1956, Mandela was arrested for treason due to his active work against the apartheid (basically a system of racial segregation). Along with 150 other men, every single person was acquitted in the marathon Treason Trial of 1956-61. Due to a long series of political massacres, shifting power and party formations, the ANC resorted to armed resistance.

In 1961, Mandela became the head of the Umkhonto we Sizwe—the ANC’s armed division. While at the helm, Mandela and his followers orchestrated a sabotage against several military and government targets, even a possible guerilla warfare. On August 5, 1962, Mandela was arrested after seventeen months of living on the run and was sentences to five years in jail. On July 11, 1963, prominent ANC leaders were rounded up, arrested, and tried at the Rivonia Trial. These leaders, of which the already imprisoned Mandela was a part, were accused of sabotage and other acts of treason.

At trial, Mandela passionately pled his case for why armed resistance was necessary. Despite Mandela’s appeal, all save one were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. While imprisoned in Robben Island, he wrote the majority of his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. In February, 1990, State President F.W. de Klerk ordered that Mandela be released and the ban of the ANC be terminated. However, before Mandela's release in 1990, Dick Cheney had voted in 1986 against a congressional resolution calling for Mandela's release from prison. In 2002, Mandela called Cheney a "dinosaur.'

In 1985 when Stevie Wonder won his Oscar for his song, 'I Just Called to Say I love You' he dedicated it to Mandela. This had the effect of  his music being banned by the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

In 2003, Mandela made no attempt to critisize the foreign policy of  George W Bush in a number of speeches. Attacking the lack of UN involvement in the decision to begin the War in Iraq, Mandela said, "It is a tragedy, what is happening, what Bush is doing. But Bush is now undermining the United Nations".

Mandela has been married three times. His first wife was Evelyn Ntoko, with whom he was married from 1944 to 1956. The couple had four children together—two sons and two daughters. Their first daughter died at only nine months old. In honor of her memory, they gave their second daughter her same name. Their first son died in a car accident (1969), and their second son died of AIDS (2005). Mandela’s second wife was Winnie Mandela from 1958 to 1996. Mandela has been with his third wife, Graca Machel, from 1998 to present.