The Life of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is a man who is widely known throughout the world. This man is considered a hero of South Africa and is a man who is also considered to be a man who helped change the world for the better. Life was difficult in the city of Mvezo, Transkei and on July 18, 1918 a hero was born. Nelson Mandela’s original name was Rolihlahla Mandela and he was born into the Madiba clan. All of Mandela’s family before him had never gone to school or received a proper education. At a young age his mother sent him to a Methodist school due to his family being of the Christian denomination. He was baptized as a Methodist and his teacher did the ritualistic custom, in most African churches, of being given an English name, which happened to be Nelson.

Mandela had to suffer a hardship early in life with the passing of his father when Nelson was at nine years of age. Nelson believed that his father had passed due to a lung disease, but the cause of his death is still unknown to this very day. Mandela said that he was very much like his father in the sense that he had “proud rebelliousness” (Mandela 24). Soon after the passing of his father Mandela’s mother took him to Mqhekezweni where he was taken under the family of Chief Dalindyebo. This family treated Mandela as their own child and it allowed him to be raised in a caring and loving environment.

This family relied heavily on Christianity as well and it made a deep impact on the life of a young Nelson Mandela. This caused him to grow up with strict moral upbringings that every person deserves fair and equal treatment and that no man is better than another man. Life was difficult in South Africa, but Christianity helped Mandela to grow and become a person with deep moral valu...

... middle of paper ...

...it better than it was when he came into it. Racism was truly a plague to all of South Africa and now the country seems to be living more or less in harmony with one another. There are no longer any massacres like there was in the 1980’s. Mandela was an extreme supporter of democracy and believed that each individual person had rights and that they should not be taken away. Mandela received a great amount of awards for his fight for peace in South Africa. He even received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in South Africa. The human race needs to learn to live more like Mandela and try to help their fellow man out, instead of fighting. There is to much violence in the world today and Mandela was a man who was able to stop most of the violence and make the country better than it had ever been before. This was the life of a man who is a hero to his nation.