Nelson Mandela: Inaugural Address (1994)
About the Author
Nelson Rolihlahla (meaning “troublemaker” in the Xhosa language) Mandela was born in 1918 in the rural Transkei in what is now the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. He attended a leading missionary school in that region and then the University College of Fort Hare before he moved to Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa, where he became active in the ANC in the early 1940s. In the 1950s, based in Johannesburg, he was one of the leading figures in the ANC's resistance to the apartheid state. The ANC was banned in 1960, and the following year he and others formed MK to challenge the state by violent means, first sabotage and later guerrilla war.
As commander in chief of MK, Mandela left the country in 1962 to organize military training for guerrillas from South Africa in other African countries. On his return to South Africa, he was arrested and jailed. Then, on June 12, 1964, he and his colleagues were given a life sentence for their involvement...
