Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Mohandas K Gandhi was born in 1869 to Hindu
parents in the state of Gujarat in Western India.
His family later sent him to London to study law. In
1893, he arrived in South Africa on a one-year
assignment to assist an Indian merchant in a civil
suit. Within days of his arrival, he was thrown
off a train, assaulted by a white coachman, denied
hotel rooms and pushed off a sidewalk – all because
of his colour. He saw the dispossession and
oppression of the Africans, the children of the soil.
He also learnt of the harassment and humiliations
suffered by Indians. It was in South Africa where
he spent two decades, in the prime of his life, that
1869 –1948
he realised his vocation and developed his philosophy
of life, the satyagraha, meaning truth force, a most
civilised and humane form of resistance to injustice,
with a willingness to suffer rather than hurt, to love
rather than hate the adversary. He was frequently
jailed as a result of the protests that he led. Before he
returned to India in 1915, he had radically changed
the lives of Indians living in Southern Africa.
Chief Albert Luthuli
1898 –1967
Albert JM Luthuli was born sometime around 1898.
He worked as a teacher until 1935. He joined the
ANC in 1945 and was elected Natal provincial
president in 1951. In 1952, he was one of the leading
forces behind the Defiance Campaign – a non-violent
protest against the pass laws. Following this campaign,
the apartheid government gave Luthuli the choice
of renouncing his membership of the ANC or being
removed from his position as tribal chief. He refused
and was subsequently dismissed from his chieftaincy.
At the end of 1952, he was elected president-general of
the ANC. The government responded by banning him.
His ban was renewed in 1954, and in 1956 he was
arrested – one of 156 people accused of high treason.
He was released shortly after for «lack of evidence»,
and in 1955 and 1958 re-elected as president-general of
the ANC. In 1960, Luthuli led the call for protest by
publicly burning his pass book. He was detained in
on 30 March – one of 18 000 arrested at a series of
police raids. In 1961, Chief Albert Luthuli was awarded
the 1960 Nobel Prize for Peace. On 21 July 1967,
he passed from the scene of active struggle for political
rights and national liberation when it was alleged he
was run over by a train.
D e s m o n d M p i l o Tu t u
Bishop Desmond Tutu was born in 1931 in Klerksdorp,
*1931
Transvaal. His father was a teacher, and he himself
was educated at Johannesburg Bantu High School. After
leaving school, he first trained as a teacher in Pretoria
and in 1954 he graduated from the University of South
Africa. After three years as a high school teacher, he
started studying theology and being ordained as a priest
in 1960. From 1962-66 he studied theology in England,
leading up to a Master of Theology. From 1967 to
1972, he taught theology in South Africa before returning to England for three years as the assistant director
of a theological institute in London. In 1975, he was
appointed Dean of St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg, the first black person to hold that position. From
1976 to 1978, he was Bishop of Lesotho, and in 1978
he became the first black Secretary General of the
South African Council of Churches. In 1984, he was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Bishop Tutu is an
honorary doctor of a number of leading universities in
the world and was appointed Chair of the South
African Reconciliation and Truth Commission.
Frederik Willem de Klerk
Frederik Willem de Klerk was born in Johannesburg as
the son of former Senator Jan de Klerk and a nephew
of J.G. Strijdom (prime minister, 1954-1958). FW de
Klerk was first elected to the South African Parliament
in 1969 as the member for Vereeniging, and entered
cabinet in 1978. He became Transvaal provincial
*1936
National Party leader in 1982. After a long political
career and with a conservative reputation, in 1989
he placed himself at the head of verligte («enlightened»)
forces within the governing party, and led a successful
palace coup against then president P.W. Botha. He
was the last National Party President of South Africa,
serving from September 1989 to May 1994 and leader
of the National Party (which later became the New
National Party) from February 1989 to September
1997. De Klerk is accredited with, together with Nelson
Mandela, for ending Apartheid, South Africa’s racial
segregation policy. He unbanned the ANC and contributed in transforming South Africa into a democracy.
In 1993, FW de Klerk received the Nobel Peace Prize
together with Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Nelson R Mandela was born on 18 July 1918. He
enrolled for a BA degree at the University of Fort Hare
where he participated in a student strike and was
expelled.
In 1944, he helped found the ANC Youth League.
Mandela was elected national volunteer-in-chief of the
1952 Defiance Campaign. In that year, he and Oliver
Tambo had established the first black legal firm in the
*1918
country. He was both Transvaal president of the
ANC and its deputy national president. He was
detained from 1960 until 1961 when he went underground to lead the campaign for a new national
convention. Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military
wing of the ANC, was born in the same year. Under
his leadership it launched a campaign of sabotage
against government and economic installations. In 1962,
Mandela left the country for military training in Algeria
and to arrange training for other MK members. On
his return, he was arrested for leaving the country
illegally and for incitement to strike. He was subsequently convicted and jailed for five years in November
1962. Whilst serving his sentence, he was charged,
in the Rivonia trial, with sabotage and sentenced to
life imprisonment. He became a central figure on
Robben Island where he was imprisoned. It was only
after his unconditional release on 11 February 1990 that
Mandela and his delegation agreed to the suspension
of the armed struggle. In 1993, he was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize together with F.W. de Klerk. On
10 May 1994, he was inaugurated as the first democratically elected President of South Africa.
Nelson Mandela retired from public life in June 1999.
Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi
Born in 1928, Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, a Zulu
chief and political leader, served as chief minister
of the bantustan KwaZulu from 1974–94, but opposed
independence for the territory. Originally an activist
within the ANC, Buthelezi revived Inkatha, originally a
Zulu cultural group in 1975 as an anti-apartheid and
Zulu nationalist organization, now the Inkatha Freedom
Party (IFP). In the 1980s, he became a prominent critic
of the ANC and its support for guerilla warfare and
international sanctions against apartheid. He favoured
a solution to apartheid based on tribalism instead of
a one-person, one-vote policy and was accused of
*1928
collaboration with the government’s security forces.
The 1990s saw increasingly violent clashes between
Inkatha and ANC supporters. Inkatha boycotted (1993)
the multiparty talks that negotiated a new South
African constitution, but eventually participated in the
1994 multiracial general elections. Buthelezi was
named home affairs minister in Nelson Mandela’s government, a position he retained in 1999 under President
Thabo Mbeki.
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki
Thabo M Mbeki was born in 1942. He joined the
ANC Youth League at the age of 14. In 1959, he came
under the guidance of Walter Sisulu and Duma Nokwe.
He left the country in 1962 under the orders from
*1942
the ANC. From Tanzania he moved to Britain to completed a Masters degree in economics. Following his
studies, he worked at the London Office with the late
Oliver Tambo before being sent to the Soviet Union in
1970 for military training. Appointed to the National
Executive Committee in 1975, he served as ANC
representative to Nigeria until 1978. On his return to
Lusaka, he became political secretary in the office
of Oliver Tambo, and then the ANC’s director of information. From this position, he played a major role in
turning the international media against apartheid. From
1989, Mbeki headed the ANC Department of Internal
Affairs, and was a key figure in the ANC’s negotiations
with the former government. After the 1994 general
election he became the first Deputy President of the
new Government. In 1997, Thabo Mbeki was elected
new President of the African National Congress.
In June 1999, he was elected President of South Africa.
Mbeki has played a leading role in the formation of
NEPAD and the African Union and played influential
roles in brokering peace deals in Rwanda, Burundi and
the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Wa l t e r M a x U l y a t e S i s u l u
Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu was born in 1912 in the
homeland of Transkei. He joined the ANC in 1940. In
1943, together with Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo,
he founded the ANC Youth League. In 1949, he was
appointed secretary general of the ANC. As a planner
of the Defiance Campaign of 1952, he was arrested that
year and given a suspended sentence. In 1953, he trav-
1912–2003
elled to Europe, the USSR, and China as an ANC
representative. He was jailed seven times in the next
ten years, including five months in 1960, and was held
under house arrest in 1962. At the Treason Trial
(1956–1961), he was eventually sentenced to six years,
but was released on bail. He went under-ground in
1963 but was caught at Rivonia on July 11. At the
conclusion of the Rivonia Trial, he was sentenced to
life imprisonment on June 12, 1964. In 1989, he
was released after 26 years in prison, and in July 1991
was elected ANC deputy president. He remained in
the position until after South Africa’s first democratic
election in 1994. In 1992, Walter Sisulu was awarded
Isitwalandwe Seaparankoe, the highest honour granted
by the ANC, for his contribution to the liberation
struggle in South Africa.
Robert Sobukwe
1924–1978
Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe was born in Graaff-Reinet
in 1924. After graduating at Fort Hare University where
he had become secretary-general of the ANC Youth
League, Sobukwe taught at Standerton and at the
University of the Witwatersrand. He identified increasingly with the Africanists within the ANC. In 1958
he broke away from the ANC to form the PAC, an
exclusively African organisation which he hoped would
lead the battle against apartheid. On 21 March 1960
– the day of the Sharpville Massacre, he was arrested
and. sentenced to three years imprisonment. Afterwards,
he was detained under a special amendment of the
Suppression of Communism Act and held on Robben
Island for six years. On his release in 1969, he was
served with a five-year banning order and sent to
Kimberley. A second five-year banning order was served
on him in 1974. After completing an economics degree
by correspondence with London University, Sobukwe
qualified as an attorney in 1975. He died in 1978.
Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe is acknowledged as one of
the sources of inspiration for the Black Consciousness
Movement.
O l i v e r R e g i n a l d Ta m b o
Oliver Tambo was born on 27th October 1917 in the
Eastern Cape. In 1944, he was among the founding
members of the ANC Youth League and became its first
1917–1993
national secretary. In 1949, he established a legal practice together with Nelson Mandela. In 1958, Oliver
Tambo became deputy president of the ANC. In 1959,
he was served with a five year banning order. After the
1960 Sharpeville massacre, he was designated by the
ANC to travel abroad to set up the ANC’s international
mission and mobilise international opinion in opposition
to the apartheid system. As a result of these activities,
South Africa was expulsed from the Commonwealth
in 1961. From small beginnings, Oliver Tambo was able
to establish ANC Missions in 27 countries by 1990.
During the 1970s, Oliver Tambo’s international prestige
rose immensely as he traversed the world, addressing
the United Nations and other international gatherings
on the issue of apartheid. In 1985, Tambo was re-elected ANC President. He returned to South Africa in
1991, after over three decades in exile. In July 1991, he
was elected National Chairperson of the ANC.
Stephen Bantu Biko
1946 –1977
Stephen Bantu Biko was a noted anti-apartheid activist
in South Africa in the 1960s. He helped found the
South African Students’ Organisation in 1968 and was
elected its first president. In 1972 he became honorary
president of the Black People’s Convention. He was
banned in March 1973, which meant that he was not
allowed to be in the company of more than one person
at a time and so could not make speeches in public.
It was also forbidden to quote him, including speeches
or simple conversations. On 6 September, 1977 he was
arrested at a police roadblock. He suffered a major
head injury while in police custody. On September 11,
policemen loaded him into the back of a vehicle and
began the 740-mile drive to another prison. He died en
route.
On October 7, 2003, South African Justice Ministry
officials announced that the five policemen who were
accused of killing Biko would not be prosecuted
because of insufficient evidence. They maintained that a
murder charge could not be supported partly because
there were no witnesses to the killing. Charges of
culpable homicide and assault were also considered, but
because the killing occurred in 1977, the time frame
for prosecution had expired.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
*1918
Ordinary Souht Africans are determined that
the past
be known,
the better
to ensure
that it is not
repeated.
Nelson Mandela