Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first democratically elected President of South Africa (1994–1999) and is one of the most-iconic political figures of the 20th century. He was born Rolihlahla Mandela on July 18, 1918, in Mvezo, Eastern Cape, South Africa, into the Madiba clan of the Thembu people. The English name "Nelson" was given to him by a primary school teacher when he was seven. He attended the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand, where he earned a law degree.

His political activism began in the late 1940s through his work with the African National Congress (ANC). He co-founded the ANC Youth League in 1944 and became increasingly involved in armed resistance to South African apartheid through the late 1950s and early 1960s. The ANC was banned in 1960 following the March 21, 1960 Sharpeville massacre, and Mandela went underground. In 1961 he co-founded the Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") — the armed wing of the ANC — and conducted a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government.

He was arrested on August 5, 1962, tried for sabotage at the 1963–1964 Rivonia Trial alongside several ANC co-defendants, and sentenced to life imprisonment on June 12, 1964. He spent the next 27 years in prison — primarily at the Robben Island Prison in Cape Town's Table Bay (1964–1982) and at Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. The international anti-apartheid movement built around his continued imprisonment, culminating in the February 11, 1990 release order by South African President F.W. de Klerk.

The post-prison period (1990–1994) produced the 1991 Mandela-de Klerk negotiations on ending apartheid, the 1993 joint Nobel Peace Prize for Mandela and de Klerk, and the April 27, 1994 South African general election (the country's first democratic non-racial election) in which the ANC won 62.6% of the vote and Mandela became South Africa's first Black president. He served a single term and chose not to seek reelection in 1999. He spent his post-presidency years on AIDS-awareness work and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He died on December 5, 2013, at age 95, in Houghton, Johannesburg. His funeral was attended by 91 heads of state.

His name Nelson is the English patronymic surname meaning "son of Neil." Nelson has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for decades.