Rights and Freedom: South Africa

Discusses the life and achievements of Nelson Mandela, discussing his childhood, education, family, and influence.

On December 5, 2013, former South African President Nelson Mandela passed away at the age of 95. People around the world mourned the death of this human rights activist. Thousands of South Africans waited hours to walk past his casket to pay their respects, and world leaders and celebrities attended his funeral, including Pope Francis, several US presidents, and Bono. Mandela was born in 1918 in South Africa. While in law school, he joined the African National Congress. The ANC spoke out against South Africa's apartheid laws, which allowed separate treatment of people based on skin color. He began his activism in the 1940s and was arrested many times before he received a life sentence in 1964. After spending more than 25 years in jail, Mandela was released in 1990 and soon after partnered with South African President F. W. de Klerk to help end apartheid. They won the Nobel Peace Prize together in 1993. The next year, Mandela became the first African president of South Africa. After his term as president, he continued his work as a human rights advocate until he retired in 2004. After a long illness, he died in 2013. He will be remembered for his leadership for years to come.

"The Defiance Campaign marked a new chapter in the struggle...going to prison became a badge of honor among Africans."―Nelson Mandela, 1952 On June 26, 1952, twenty-five men and five women entered the waiting room of a railway station in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. If they had been white people of European descent, they would have gone unnoticed. But they were black South Africans who were violating the waiting room's "Europeans Only" sign as part of the Campaign of Defiance against Unjust Laws. Instituted by the African National Congress (ANC), the campaign aimed to peacefully defy a series of laws known as apartheid―a system of legal racial segregation. Across the country, similar protests took place and more than 250 resisters went to jail that day. The ANC's strategy was to fill the jails to overflowing and cause the police and judicial branches of government to break down. In July fifteen hundred men and women took part in the campaign; in August more than two thousand went to jail. The Defiance Campaign eventually triumphed, but not before the tragedy of bloodshed, violence, and death among three generations of South Africans. In this riveting story of the long struggle against apartheid, we'll explore the reasons why thousands were willing to die in the fight for civil rights. And we'll witness how their courageous efforts led to the day in 1994 when Nelson Mandela stood before thousands of free South Africans as the nation's first black president.