Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela's greatest achievements were that of turning around the African National Congress and winning the Nobel Peace prize for his fight to abolish the Apartheid system in South Africa.

The African National Congress was established in 1912, and in 1919 they organized their first public action, though unfortunately it resulted in the arrest of several hundred people. Nelson Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1944, at a time when the abolishment of the Apartheid was just talk. Also in 1944, in hopes to pull younger people into the African National Congress the ANC youth league was formed.

de Klerk unbanned a number of organisations including the ANC and the South Africa Communist Party in February of that year.

Nelson Mandela was released, and soon elected president of the ANC who four years later swept to power with a 63% majority in the first free elections.

Mandela was elected President of South Africa

Colonial South African Native National Congress (renamed the African National Congress in 1923). They hoped to fight racist laws by building solidarity among South Africa's diverse and sometimes warring African societies. Seme's speech to the founding convention, in which he addressed "chiefs of royal blood and gentlemen of our race," suggested the aristocratic nature of the group's original leadership. The ANC intially fought the color bar through legal and constitutional means, mostly petitions, speeches, and publicity drives. These efforts accomplished relatively little, but for several years the ANC membership resisted a more radical approach. In 1930 it expelled its president J. T. Gunmede because he advocated cooperation with the South African Communist Party...

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...ower of black South Africans, exercised for the first time, swept the ANC into a commanding legislative majority, and Nelson Mandela into the presidency.

Since becoming the nation's ruling party, the ANC has faced the challenge of retaining and broadening its appeal with considerable success. Under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the ANC has crafted an image of pragmatism over militancy that attracts liberal capitalists and continues to be popular with labor, socialists, and women's groups. Even potentially damaging testimony about Umkhonto activities before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigates South Africa's apartheid-era crimes, has not significantly eroded the ANC's popularity. Most analysts believe it will be victorious in the 1999 elections, when the likely ANC candidate will be Thabo Mbeki, who assumed ANC leadership in December 1997.