Part of the success of the ANC gaining equal rights for all South Africans is due to a man named Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela, proclaimed as “one of the 20th Century’s greatest leaders” (5), was born 1918 in a small village of South Africa. Around the age of 22, Mandela finished his boarding school education and soon attended Fort Hare University. From there Mandela earned his BA degree and entered law school. Nelson Mandela started his political career by joining the ANC around 1943. A couple years later in 1944, Mandela and his friends formed the ANC Youth League created to make the ANC a more activist organization. “In 1948, a popular political party named the National Party created the apartheid policy which began the production of new laws supporting racial discrimination and the oppression of black South Africans” (5).
Then Mandela became the national president of the ANC Youth League and soon spent over the course of the next nine to ten years being banned to attend ANC meetings and sometimes being put in jail due to leading campaigns that try to promote rights for black South Africans. Soon in 1964, Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for trying to violently overthrow the South African government by using a military wing called “Umkhonto we Sizwe” meaning “Spear of the Nation.” He spends 27 years in prison until he is finally free and he soon becomes president of the ANC in 1991. In 1992, the ANC starts the policy of “rolling mass action” made up of a bunch of strikes, protests, and boycotts against the government. Then in 1994, Mandela is elected president of South Africa and for the first time in history, all races vote in South Africa’s democratic elections.
Nelson Mandela greatly helped for the ANC to succeed and improved South Africa’s political system by leading his organization to strongly resist the South African apartheid in the late 1970s to the 1980s. The South African government at the time was ruled by white English folks. The National Party eventually won an election and started the apartheid as mentioned before. The ANC then started strikes, marches, and civil disobedience protests against the South African apartheid. Their military wing trained ANC people in other countries to battle the South African government. In 1961, the ANC started guerilla attacks, which were when small groups of people unexpectedly attacked the government. This group sabotaged anything related to the apartheid. They not only sabotaged and destroyed government buildings but also police stations. Then Mandela presented the “Record of Understanding” to lessen all the deaths and violence in his country and this eventually developed into a new, better constitution for the country. And after becoming president, the Republic government of South Africa was transformed into a democratic country where people of all races could vote and the ANC also helped to end the apartheid in South Africa.
The African National Congress (ANC) was very determined to fight against the South African apartheid system to gain equal rights for black South Africans. Nelson Mandela was the leader at the time when they were battling against the government. And though Mandela spent nearly half his life in jail, his efforts to better his nation paid off in the end. The ANC was supposed to be a non-violent organization but when nothing was happening towards getting the blacks closer to racial equality, Nelson made the organization more active by starting the “Spear of the Nation” group that sabotaged the government. And though Nelson became imprisoned for many years and the ANC became outlawed for about thirty years, the determination and efforts put forth by this organization and individual resulted in a better political system in South Africa where there was equal rights to all races.
