Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison — eighteen of them on Robben Island breaking rocks in a limestone quarry — and emerged not with vengeance but with a vision of reconciliation that transformed South Africa and inspired the world. Elected as South Africa's first Black president in 1994, Mandela dismantled apartheid through negotiation rather than retribution, proving that moral authority could be more powerful than military force.

Born in Mvezo, Transkei, in 1918, Mandela was the son of a Thembu chief. He studied law at the University of Witwatersrand and in 1944 joined the African National Congress, helping to transform it from a polite petitioning organization into a mass movement. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, Mandela co-founded the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, concluding that nonviolence alone could not defeat a regime willing to murder peaceful protesters.

Arrested in 1962, Mandela used his trial to deliver a four-hour speech from the dock that became one of the most important political statements of the twentieth century. His words — 'an ideal for which I am prepared to die' — echoed around the world. After his release in 1990, he negotiated the end of apartheid and became the embodiment of forgiveness as political strategy.