Nelson Mandela (1918- )

South African president. Born near Umtata on 18 July 1918, the son of a paramount chief of the Thembu (Xhosa) people, he studied at Fort Hare University, where he became one of the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League. In 1952, with Oliver Tambo, he opened the country's first black law practice.

Soon, however, his political activities resulted in police surveillance, and in 1956, he was accused of treason. The trial took years to come to an end, and Mandela used it as a platform to air his anti-apartheid ideas. He was eventually acquitted in 1961.

After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, however, he had abandoned his non-violent stance. He became commander-in-chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the ANC's armed organisation. Arrested in 1962, he was sentenced to life imprisonment two years later.

Confined on Robben Island, South Africa's most notorious prison, Mandela became an international symbol of black resistance, partly because of the activities of his wife Winnie, who campaigned for his release. In 1985, Mandela won even more respect when he rejected the government's offer of freedom if he renounced violence.

On 11 February 1990, he was finally released unconditionally, when the government realised that it needed him for discussions aimed at ending white rule. After a series of difficult negotiations, he won full democracy for all South African citizens, and shared the Nobel peace prize in 1993 with Frederik Willem de Klerk, the pragmatic white president.

After the ANC victory in the 1994 elections, Mandela became the country's first black president on 10 May, a position he held until his retirement in 1999. During that time, he used his particular qualities of charm, enthusiasm, strong leadership and moral integrity to reconcile today's South Africa with the injustices of its recent apartheid past. His wonderful book, Long Walk to Freedom, tells his life story.

Nelson and Winnie Mandela separated in 1992 and were divorced in 1996. In 1998, on his 80th birthday, Nelson Mandela married Grace Machel, the widow of the president of Mozambique, who had been killed in an air crash in 1986.

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