Nelson Mandela – Most committed, Most sacrificed, Most accomplished
20 years ago before today, Nelson Mandela stepped out of South Africa’s Victor Verster prison a free man. He was his country’s most famous freedom fighter. He was convicted of treason in 1964 and given a life sentence for opposing South African apartheid. He served 27 years before receiving a pardon.
Once free, Mandela worked with South Africa’s white president, F.W. de Klerk to end those policies, knocking down the pillars of segregation one at a time. Three years after his release from prison, Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize. The African National Congress that was banned in 1961 was once again legal, elected Mandela as its presidential candidate. Mandela won South Africa’s presidential election in a landslide in 1994, the country’s first black president.
“We dedicate this day to all the heroes and heroines in this country and the rest of the world who sacrificed in many ways and surrendered their lives so that we could be free,” he said in his inauguration speech. “Their dreams have become reality. Freedom is their reward. We are both humbled and elevated by the honor and privilege that you, the people of South Africa, have bestowed on us, as the first President of a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist government.”
“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination,” he said. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony, and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realized. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
“I have traveled this long road to freedom,” he wrote. “I trust I did not falter. I made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that, after crossing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to cross.”
Twenty years ago, there was no freedom for Mandela, no freedom for black South Africans. There may be more hills to cross, but black South Africans are no longer strangers to freedom.
