One of the world's most revered statesmen, Nelson Mandela led the struggle to replace South Africa's apartheid regime with a non-racial democracy.

Born on July 18, 1918, Nelson R. Mandela enrolled in 1939 at Fort Hare University College, one of the few places in South Africa where Africans could pursue university education.  He was expelled in his third year for organizing a student boycott of the Student Representative Council after the authorities had deprived it of its powers.

In 1940, Mr. Mandela went to Johannesburg to complete his studies at the University of Witwatersrand.  He stayed in Alexandra township amid the poverty, overcrowding, exclusion, and harassment that Africans faced in South Africa; he worked in the mines, there too living in appalling conditions with other migrant workers.

In 1944, Mr. Mandela joined the African National Congress, working to found its Youth League, dedicated to mass action based on strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience.  In 1949, one year after the white National Party was voted into power by an almost exclusively white electorate on a policy of consolidating and extending apartheid, the ANC adopted a program of action along the lines advocated by Mr. Mandela.  Two years later, the ANC brought democratic organizations together to form the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws.  Mr. Mandela was appointed volunteer-in-chief and was among 3,500 people arrested for deliberately breaking laws enforcing segregation.  He received a nine-month suspended sentence.

In 1952, Mr. Mandela set up his legal practice in Johannesburg in partnership with Oliver Tambo, then ANC national chairman, defying authorities by refusing to move offices from the city center to a black township.  The government banned Mr. Mandela and 51 other poeple in 1952; although that order expired in 1953, he was banned for the second time after opposing forced removals from Sophiatown and Western Areas in South Africa.  The Transvaal Law Society petitioned the Supreme Court in 1954 to srike Mr. Mandela from the attorneys' roll because of his involvement in the defiance campaign.

Mr. Mandela was still banned in 1944 when the Congress of the People brought 3,000 delegates from all over the country to consider the Freedom Charter, adopted by unanimous acclamation.  Mr. Mandela was among 156 people associated with the Congress of the People who were arrested on Dec. 5, 1956, and charged with treason.  When the trial ended in early 1961, South Africa was about to become a republic ruled by the white minority and based on apartheid.

Mr. Mandela, under successive banning orders for nine years, delivered the main speech at a conference attended by 1,400 African delegates, when the most recent ban on him had not been immediately renewed.  The conference elected a national action committee to press for a national convention to decide South Africa's future democratically.

In 1961, Mr. Mandela and others set up an armed wing of the ANC to press for change through acts of sabotage strictly targeted at installations and not at people.  Mr. Mandela was forced underground in a fresh round of arrests and traveled secretly throughout the coutnry and abroad.  He was captured in Harwick, Natal, on Aug. 5, 1962.  To prevent publication or quotation of his words, he was banned while in prison.  In November 1962, he was sentenced to five years hard labor, having been charged with inciting Africans in 1961 and leaving the country without valid travel documents.  He was imprisoned on Robben Island.

In 1963, Mr. Mandela was brought from prison to stand trial with other ANC leaders on charges of sabotage and attempted overthrow of the government.  They were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.  Although Mr. Mandela faced brutal conditions in prison and his family was subjected to severe harassment, he managed to smuggle notes from prison encouraging the struggle against injustice.

In 1985, faced with the widespread resistance which prompted it to declare the state of emergency, the South African governement offered to release Mr. Mandela on the condition that he renounce his commitment to the ANC's armed struggle.  He had rejected previous offers made on the condition that he live in the Transkei bantustan.  In 1989, he met State President P.W. Botha and later met F.W. de Klerk, Mr. Botha's successor.

On Feb. 11, 1990, Mr. Mandela was freed unconditionally.  In July 1991, at the first national conference since the party was banned in 1960, Mr. Mandela was elected ANC president.

In 1994, South Africa's first non-racial elections were held, marking the first time that Mr. Mandela himself was able to vote in his own country. He was elected president and served a five-year term. Since stepping down as president in 1999, Mr. Mandela has become South Africa's highest-profile ambassador, campaigning in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

He was also active in peace negotiations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. Fondly known in South Africa by his clan name 'Madiba,' Mr. Mandela remains an inspiration to all those around the world fighting injustice and oppression. On his 89th birthday in Johannesburg, Mr. Mandela announced the formation of The Elders, an independent group of eminent global leaders who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering, and promote the shared interests of humanity.  Mr. Mandela now serves the group in an honorary capacity.