In his younger age
Who was He?
Nelson Mandela was the first Black President of South Africa and he was one of the most instrumental figures that helped end apartheid in South Africa. After his term as president, Nelson Mandela went on to become an advocate for a variety of social and human rights organizations.
A Quick History
Nelson Mandela was born in a Mvezo, a small village in the South Africa. He was the first in his family to attend school and it was there that his English teacher gave him the name Nelson.
His political activity started when the National Party which supported the apartheid policy of racial segregation won the elections. He began actively campaigning against the policies using non violent methods, as inspired by Mahatmas Gandhi.
However, when he began to realize that non violence would not suffice, he began resorting to guerrilla warfare to achieve his means. The United States deemed Mandela as a terrorist and refused him entry.
After being on the run for 17 months, Nelson Mandela was finally captured and imprisoned for 27 years.
However, toward the late 1980s, there was mounting pressure from the international and local community for the South African government to release Mandela. He was finally released on 11 February 1990.
South Africa's first multi-racial elections in which full enfranchisement was granted were held on 27 April 1994, Mandela’s organization won that election and became the first Black President of South Africa.
As President, Mandela presided over the transition from minority rule and apartheid, winning international respect for his advocacy of national and international reconciliation.
Awards and Honours
1. Nobel Peace Prize 1993
2. Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award
3. Honorary citizen of Belgrade, Serbia
4. Listed as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004 by Time magazine
5. and over a 100 more…
2. Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award
3. Honorary citizen of Belgrade, Serbia
4. Listed as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004 by Time magazine
5. and over a 100 more…
Nelson Mandela
Leadership Lessons
1. Your vision in life must be for greater good.
Nelson Mandela saw an Africa where apartheid would finally be abolished and every man would be free and equal in the eyes of the Nation.
It was this vision that propelled him to do what he had to do, and it was this vision that sustained him through the darkest days in prison.
Sometimes we think that having a vision in life means thinking about having a big house, a big car and lots of possessions; there’s nothing wrong with that. But when the going gets tough, you’ll give it up easily because there’s really no big deal about having those.
Your purpose here on Earth is to be a blessing to the rest of society and living it out gives you the energy you need to persist until your vision comes to pass.
2. Not everyone will support your vision.
Before Nelson Mandela successfully abolished apartheid from Africa, he had to face a lot of opposition from individuals and organizations all over the world.
No matter how ideal your vision is, the fact is that a vision means change for people. Not everyone wants to change because change is uncomfortable. For some, change is outright painful.
Although everyone today seems to be supporting Nelson Mandela’s vision and lauding him for his achievements, this was not the case many years before.
During the early years of Nelson Mandela’s movement, he was even deemed a terrorist by the United States and also thrown in prison for many years.
This will be the same case for you. If you’re pursing a great vision for a better world; don’t expect everyone around you to rally behind you. Expect people to stand against you.
3. You need to fight for your vision.
This means that you have to fight for your vision. Your journey to seeing your vision come to pass won’t be a walk in the park. You’re going to face many obstacles along the way and individuals who will oppose your movement.
Because of that, you have to be conscious about it and not get discouraged at the first obstacle. You have to fight. Break down the walls and breakthrough every time you feel like giving up.
Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in prison before he was elected President of South Africa. Faced with such a huge setback; he never gave up his vision.
Though you will never end up in prison, but you must also understand that you will face such setbacks in your life too. Don’t give up and keep pressing on.
Nelson Mandela has always felt most at ease around children, and in some ways his greatest deprivation was that he spent 27 years without hearing a baby cry or holding a child's hand. Last month, when I visited Mandela in Johannesburg — a frailer, foggier Mandela than the one I used to know — his first instinct was to spread his arms to my two boys. Within seconds they were hugging the friendly old man who asked them what sports they liked to play and what they'd had for breakfast. While we talked, he held my son Gabriel, whose complicated middle name is Rolihlahla, Nelson Mandela's real first name. He told Gabriel the story of that name, how in Xhosa it translates as "pulling down the branch of a tree" but that its real meaning is "troublemaker."
As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week, Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite white and black, oppressor and oppressed, in a way that had never been done before. In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. After all that time spent in his company, I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done; it was like the sun going out of one's life. We have seen each other occasionally over the years, but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.
I also wanted to talk to him about leadership. Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint, but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian: a politician. He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior, martyr, diplomat and statesman. Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts, he would often say to me that an issue "was not a question of principle; it was a question of tactics." He is a master tactician.
Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquiries or favors. He's fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity, and vain enough to care that they not think him diminished. But the world has never needed Mandela's gifts — as a tactician, as an activist and, yes, as a politician — more, as he showed again in London on June 25, when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. As we enter the main stretch of a historic presidential campaign in America, there is much that he can teach the two candidates. I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.
No. 1
Courage is not the absence of fear — it's inspiring others to move beyond it
In 1994, during the presidential-election campaign, Mandela got on a tiny propeller plane to fly down to the killing fields of Natal and give a speech to his Zulu supporters. I agreed to meet him at the airport, where we would continue our work after his speech. When the plane was 20 minutes from landing, one of its engines failed. Some on the plane began to panic. The only thing that calmed them was looking at Mandela, who quietly read his newspaper as if he were a commuter on his morning train to the office. The airport prepared for an emergency landing, and the pilot managed to land the plane safely. When Mandela and I got in the backseat of his bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally, he turned to me and said, "Man, I was terrified up there!"
Courage is not the absence of fear — it's inspiring others to move beyond it
In 1994, during the presidential-election campaign, Mandela got on a tiny propeller plane to fly down to the killing fields of Natal and give a speech to his Zulu supporters. I agreed to meet him at the airport, where we would continue our work after his speech. When the plane was 20 minutes from landing, one of its engines failed. Some on the plane began to panic. The only thing that calmed them was looking at Mandela, who quietly read his newspaper as if he were a commuter on his morning train to the office. The airport prepared for an emergency landing, and the pilot managed to land the plane safely. When Mandela and I got in the backseat of his bulletproof BMW that would take us to the rally, he turned to me and said, "Man, I was terrified up there!"
Mandela was often afraid during his time underground, during the Rivonia trial that led to his imprisonment, during his time on Robben Island. "Of course I was afraid!" he would tell me later. It would have been irrational, he suggested, not to be. "I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world." But as a leader, you cannot let people know. "You must put up a front."
And that's precisely what he learned to do: pretend and, through the act of appearing fearless, inspire others. It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Robben Island, where there was much to fear. Prisoners who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard, upright and proud, was enough to keep them going for days. He knew that he was a model for others, and that gave him the strength to triumph over his own fear.
No. 2
Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind
Mandela is cagey. in 1985 he was operated on for an enlarged prostate. When he was returned to prison, he was separated from his colleagues and friends for the first time in 21 years. They protested. But as his longtime friend Ahmed Kathrada recalls, he said to them, "Wait a minute, chaps. Some good may come of this."
Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind
Mandela is cagey. in 1985 he was operated on for an enlarged prostate. When he was returned to prison, he was separated from his colleagues and friends for the first time in 21 years. They protested. But as his longtime friend Ahmed Kathrada recalls, he said to them, "Wait a minute, chaps. Some good may come of this."
The good that came of it was that Mandela on his own launched negotiations with the apartheid government. This was anathema to the African National Congress (ANC). After decades of saying "prisoners cannot negotiate" and after advocating an armed struggle that would bring the government to its knees, he decided that the time was right to begin to talk to his oppressors.
When he initiated his negotiations with the government in 1985, there were many who thought he had lost it. "We thought he was selling out," says Cyril Ramaphosa, then the powerful and fiery leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. "I went to see him to tell him, What are you doing? It was an unbelievable initiative. He took a massive risk."
Mandela launched a campaign to persuade the ANC that his was the correct course. His reputation was on the line. He went to each of his comrades in prison, Kathrada remembers, and explained what he was doing. Slowly and deliberately, he brought them along. "You take your support base along with you," says Ramaphosa, who was secretary-general of the ANC and is now a business mogul. "Once you arrive at the beachhead, then you allow the people to move on. He's not a bubble-gum leader — chew it now and throw it away."
For Mandela, refusing to negotiate was about tactics, not principles. Throughout his life, he has always made that distinction. His unwavering principle — the overthrow of apartheid and the achievement of one man, one vote — was immutable, but almost anything that helped him get to that goal he regarded as a tactic. He is the most pragmatic of idealists.
