Nelson Mandela Research Paper

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist who became the President of South Africa for five years. He was the first black president of South Africa and the very first to ever be elected in a democratic election in his country. The government he ran pursued his personal goals of breaking down and shatter apartheid. To get to be the man he came to be, Nelson Mandela was influenced by and very similar to many historical figures preceding and from his time. Although they were from different centuries, they still each had a great impact on the South African leader. John Locke brought about liberalism, an important factor in Mandela’s life. Karl Marx brought the theory of communism, a next level of socialism. Lastly Mahatma Gandhi

Mandela who was born in the following century, shared the same political views and in secrecy, adopted the political ideology of communism, a political theory advocating a society where all property is publicly owned and everyone works and gets paid according to his or her abilities and needs. Communism is a theory that came after socialism, a similar theory about equality of all. These ideas combatted capitalism. Nelson Mandela enjoyed the idea that all should share wealth and power. At the time it was just a group of supreme whites with majority of wealth and power while the multiple other races suffered from unfair treatment and disadvantages in comparison to the small white population. Mandela, influenced by Karl Marx, joined the underground South African Communist Party in secrecy in 1961. Later on in Nelson Mandela’s lifetime, after getting out of prison, the power was taken from the whites, and he was made South Africa’s first democratic, and black

Both of these men lived during the same time period in the early nineteen hundreds. In both their home countries, India and Africa, they were being suppressed and treated unfairly by a white minority who unfairly distributed power and wealth amongst themselves and few others. Both of these men came after their fathers who were both major political leaders. Ghandi’s, a prime minister, Mandela’s, a chief of a village in south Africa. Gandhi and Mandela were both into the practice of law. Both of these men were leaders in their countries, they fought for the same goals, but had different ideas of how to achieve freedom. Gandhi believed in nonviolent protest/resistance. Mahatma Gandhi's most famous act of nonviolent protest/resistance was the Salt March on March 12, 1930. This was a big part of an Indian independence movement that protested the British Salt business in India. Along the Salt March, as a part of protest, Gandhi led the people to obtain salt without paying taxes to the British. Due to his protest and disrespect for the British power in India, Gandhi was arrested. Nelson Mandela, unlike Gandhi, had a different way of going about obtaining his rights and equality. Mandela was a more violent activist and protestor. In the June of 1964, he was sentenced to prison for life for sabotage and attempting to overthrow the state through