South Africa: Nelson Mandela, 1918 - 2013

Nelson Mandela for decades served as the inspirational leader of worldwide opposition to one of the most roundly vilified systems of political racism the world has seen. His lifelong struggle against apartheid saw him spend 27 years as a political prisoner, eighteen of which he served at the notorious Robben Island prison. After his release on the 11th of February, 1990, he was elected president of the African National Congress, in 1994 becoming the first black president of South Africa, and the first to gain office through fully representative elections. Nobody did more in the post-Apartheid years to advance the cause of African education, and drive progress towards the goal of providing education to all.

His task as president of a liberated South Africa was to heal the deep rifts left by the apartheid laws of the 1950s and overcome the problems they had left behind - the huge wealth and land-ownership divide between black and white communities, the widespread lack of basic services such as sanitation and healthcare, and the legacy of racism. He directed huge energy towards the furtherance of education, in whose power to improve lives and destroy inequality he was a passionate believer.

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