You might remember Nelson Mandela as this man the peacemaker who lead South Africa post-apartheid.
But to really understand him you also have to know this man the young defiant rebel who was so committed to liberating his country, aswell as willing to die for his cause, this is a look at Mandela The Rebel.
His birth name was Rolihlahla - which means troublemaker, and he lived up to that name from a young age. Mandela got kicked out of college for taking part in a student strike and then ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage.
It was 1941 in Johannesburg and black South Africans didn't have any rights, so Mandela became active in the African National Congress or ANC a black liberation movement.
When apartheid became official law Mandela and other activists fought back by organizing active civil disobedience like the Defiance Campaign, that's when thousand of non whites provoked arrest by deliberately breaking apartheid laws.
And while Mandela would later go on to win a Nobel Peace Prize he was no pacifist, in fact as the freedom struggle evolved he even advocated armed resistance.
After the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 when police killed 69 protesters, Mandela cofounded the ANC's militant wing, it was called Umkhonto We Sizwe, which means Spear of the Nation.
Around that time Mandela had this to say about non-violence : "There are many people who feel that is useless and quite futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence against a government whose reply is only savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people."
Faced with such a regime and as a last resort ANC leaders considered sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and open revolution.
They decided to start with sabotage because they wanted to avoid the loss of life. Keep in mind that the goal was still political reconciliation and a non-racial society as originally outlined in a landmark document called the Freedom Charter.
on December 16th 1961 MK set off homemade bombs at power stations and government offices around the country.
In the weeks to come there are more bombing campaigns, no civilians were killed during these incidents.
Mandela embraced his role as a guerilla leader and even trained with the Algerian National Liberation Front outside the country, but in August 1962 he was arrested back in South Africa and charged with sabotage.
Even though he faced the death penalty, Mandela remained defiant, he gave a three hour long speech at his trial ending with a call for a democratic and free society.
"It is an ideal for which I hope to live and to see realized.
But my Lord, if it needs be it is an ideal which I am prepared to die."
Mandela went on to jail for 27 years but his ideal was eventually realized.
Sometimes it takes rebels to change the world.
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