4th Journal😊

African literature: Nelson Mandela

I guess it’s the fifth week already right?,well it doesn’t matter anyway.So the journal is about Nelson Mandela, he was the President of South Africa,an anti-apartheid,revolutionary,politician and his government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Xhosa is born to the thembu royal family, Mandela attended Universities where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the treason trial from 1956 to 1961.

Influenced By Marxism, he secretly joined the South African Communist party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant umkhonto we sizwe in 1961, leading a saboage campaign against the government. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the rivonia trial.Mandela served 27 years in prison, on robben island, and later in polsmore prison and victor verster prison. Amid international pressure and growing fear of a racial civil war, President F.W de Klerk released him in 1990.

Mandela and de Klerk negotiated an end to apartheid and organised the 1994 multiracial elections, in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president. Leading a broad government, which made a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country’s racial groups and created the truth and reconciliation commission to investigate past human rights abuses. While continuing with the former government’s economics liberalism, his administration introduced measures to encourage land form, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator in the pan am flight 103 bombing trial and served as Secretary General of the non-aligned movement from 1998–99. Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist, while those on the radical left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid’s supporters. Conversely, he gained international acclaim for his activism,He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, described as the “father of the Nation".