BTLEW Lesson 7 – Mandela’s Garden Part Two ENTER.

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Lesson 7 – Mandela’s Garden

Part TwoPart Two

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I. Author—Nelson Mandela

II. Long Walk to Freedom

III. Robben Island

IV. Maximum Security Prison

Background Background InformationInformation

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Nelson Mandela (1918—) Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.


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To be continued on the next page.

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SinceSince his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.


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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 25th, 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe.


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Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in law in 1942.

He joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948.

He went on trial for treason in 1956—1961 and was acquitted in 1961.


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Mandela married Winnie in 1958. It was a love story, tempered tragically by the political ambitions of its two larger-than-life protagonists. He felt guilty for what Winnie had endured because of years of imprisonment. But Winnie and his family always came second to his other great love, the ANC and the liberation struggle.


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In 1960, ANC was banned by the government, so Mandela began the underground activities. In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity.


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“I have fought against white domination and I have fought black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society, in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is the hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

—Mandela the statement from the dock


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On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.


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“He always made the point. If they say you must run, insist on walking. If they say you must walk fast, insist on walking slowly. That was the whole point. We are going to set the terms.”

—fellow prisoner


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During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela's reputation grew steadily. He was widely accepted as the most significant black leader in South Africa and became a potent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement gathered strength. He consistently refused to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom.


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I.I. Author Author Mandela’s visits of his former prison cell


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I.I. Author Author DURING A VISIT IN FEB. 1995: As President, Nelson Mandela chips at a rock in the Robben Island quarry. Authorities had just signed over the tiny island off Cape Town to the Department of Arts and Culture for development as a museum.


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PRISON CELL: This photo of Mandela's prison cell shows the desk at which he sat.


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Nelson Mandela was released on February 18, 1990. After his release, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into his life's work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after the organization had been banned in 1960, Mandela was elected President of the ANC.


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Release day


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1993 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Excerpt from the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech "We stand here today as nothing more than a representative of the millions of our people who dared to rise up against a social system whose very essence is war, violence, racism, oppression, repression and the impoverishment of an entire people."


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In 1994, he was elected President of South Africa.

• In 1999, he stepped down from his post and gave his power to his successor.


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SMILE KNOWN ROUND THE WORLD: Nelson Mandela walking the streets of Durban, South Africa, during his campaign for the presidency in April 1994. His spirit of forgiveness is widely credited with bringing about a peaceful transition from white to black rule.

During the campaign


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There is consensus in South Africa that without Mandela’s personal commitment to reconciliation, his moral authority, integrity, and intense compassion, the country’s transition to democracy might not have gone as smoothly. He brought about a peaceful transition from white to black rule.

Nelson Mandela’s Contribution

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Long Walk to Freedom is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, a book destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history's greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life—an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph.


II.II. Long Walk to Long Walk to FreedomFreedom


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The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children.




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He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He recounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid.

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II.II. Long Walk to Long Walk to FreedomFreedomFinally he provides the ultimate inside

account of the unforgettable events since his release that produced at last a free, multiracial democracy in South Africa.

To millions of people around the world, Nelson Mandela stands, as no other living figure does, for the triumph of dignity and hope over despair and hatred, of self-discipline and love over persecution and evil. Long Walk to Freedom embodies that spirit in a book for all time.

The end of Long Walk to Freedom.

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III.III. Robben IslandRobben Island


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Picture of Robben Island



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Robben Island is situated a mere 11km from Cape Town, in the middle of Table Bay, within clear sight of the city. It was on this island that Nelson Mandela was held prisoner for 18 years, much of it under hard labour. Prior to being a prison for political activists during the Apartheid era, the island was a leper colony. The island is now a museum and conservation area and was declared a World Heritage site in 1999.



The end of Robben Island.

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IV. Maximum IV. Maximum Security PrisonSecurity Prison


The sprawling Robben Island Maximum Security Prison was built in the early 1960s. The prison was built over graves from the leper period with slate dug from the stone quarries by the prisoners themselves. The Maximum Security Prison soon became known as the 'hell-hole' of apartheid. Nelson Mandela described it as 'without question the harshest, most iron-fisted outpost of the South African penal system'.

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It became notorious worldwide for Spartan conditions and brutal treatment. The idea was to crush the opponents of apartheid and the ideas they stood for. Conditions were particularly bad in the first decade. However, by the mid-1970s conditions had improved. Growing resistance, and the Soweto uprising of 1976 started changing the balance of power in South Africa. There was also an increase in international pressure. Nevertheless Robben Island remained a place of deprivation and a symbol of apartheid's twisted racial ideology.

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Picture tour of Maximum Security Prison



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Picture tour of Maximum Security Prison


The end of Maximum Security Prison.

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BTLEW Lesson 7 – Mandela’s Garden Part Two ENTER.

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