Author(s): Mamta Sharma Chunge

Biography

Nelson Mandela was the mastermind behind the armed struggle of the African National Congress (ANC) to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa. Today, he is not just an African legend but an international icon symbolising one of the greatest struggles against atrocities committed by the human species against its own kind. Nelson Mandela is a trustworthy politician and an international statesman with an incomparable moral influence. He had grown up in a country where people could be jailed for drinking from a wrong water fountain, get less pay for the same job because of their skin colour, where they were repeatedly told by the government that they were savages...on 10 May, 1994, Nelson Mandela took over the first democratically elected President of South Africa and continued until June 1999. This marked the transition from the white minority rule... "if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart that its opposite" -- Nelson Mandela.