NELSON ROLIHLAHLA MANDELA was born into the Madiba clan in the Transkei, South Africa, on 18 July 1918. He moved to Johannesburg in 1941 where he entered the African National Congress as one of the co-founders of the ANC Youth League in 1944; opened South Africa’s first black law firm with his ANC comrade Oliver Tambo in 1952; and became the father of five children.

A leading figure in the ANC’s armed struggle against the government’s apartheid policies, he was already serving a five-year sentence for leaving the country without a passport and inciting workers to strike in 1962 when he was charged with sabotage in 1963 and sentenced to life imprisonment the following year.

By the time he was released in 1990, after more than twenty-seven years of incarceration, his image and story had become synonymous with the international anti-apartheid movement. He was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and became South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.

He is the author of the international bestseller Long Walk to Freedom and its sequel, Dare Not Linger: The Presidential Years, which was published in 2017. He died in December of 2013.