PERSONALITY OF THE DAY: NELSON MANDELA.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, who lived between 18 July 1918 to 5 December 2013 happens to start out as a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, he later became the Number One Citizen of South Africa from the year 1994 to 1999. He turned out to be the nation's first black head of state and the first elected in a totally democratic election. 

Mandela’s Administration basically was turned on to destroying the standards apartheid by coming against institutionalized racial views and seeing to racial reconciliation. having the ideology of an African nationalist and socialist, he was President of the African National Congress (ANC) party between 1991 and 1997.

Mandela’s birthplace is Mvezo to the Thembu royal family. He went on to study law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand after which he worked as a barrister in the city of Johannesburg. It was in this city that he began to get attached in anti-colonial and African nationalist polity, signing up with the ANC in 1943 and coming up with the idea of its Youth League in 1944.

As soon as the National Party's Solitary White-Administration brought about apartheid—a process of racial segregation that gave large portion of advantage to the whites Citizens—he in conjunction with the ANC took it upon themselves to stop the policy.

Mandela was made President of the ANC's Transvaal aspect, growing up to high echelon for his activities in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was arrested again and again for treason attempts and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial.

Motivated by Marxism, he in secret signed up with the estranged South African Communist Party (SACP). Although previously totally related to non-violent protest, in partnership with the SACP he started the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and saw to a sabotage campaign against the administration.

In the year 1962, he was arrested for planning to overthrow the government and sent to life in jail in the Rivonia Trial.

Mandela spent the whole of 27 years in prison, firstly in Robben Island but he was later moved to Pollsmoor Prison and later Victor Verster Prison.

Because of the rising local and oversea interventions, and with the rumors of a brewing of a racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk let him go in the year 1990. Mandela and de Klerk discussed an end to apartheid and came up with the 1994 multiracial nationwide elections, this saw Mandela leading his party to victory and he was sworn in as the President.

His administration was one which led a big coalition government that ignited a new constitution, Mandela stressed unity between the nation's racial groups and started the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to interrogate past human rights abuses. 

Economically, Mandela's government continued the strides of its predecessor's liberal framework despite his own socialist paradigm, also bringing up ways to improve land reform, alleviate poverty, and stretch health care services.

At the global level, he was a mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and was also the Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, his tenure spanned from 1998 to 1999. He refused a second presidential term and in the year 1999, he handed over to his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela turned out to be a renowned elder statesman and was into facing poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Mandela happened to be a man of many controversy for a large portion of his life. Even though critics on the right saw him as a communist terrorist and those on the  racial left saw him as too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid's supporters, Despite all this, Mandela got global respect for his activism.

he got over 250 honours—including the Nobel Peace Prize—and was seen as the subject of a cult of personality. He is seen and accorded with deep respect in South Africa and beyond, he is therefore regarded by his Xhosa clan name, “Madiba”, and called "Father of the Nation".