I have dedicated my whole life to this struggle of the South African people. I have fought against white domination and against black domination. I have fed the ideal of a free and democratic society in which all people live together in harmony and with equal possibilities. It is an ideal I can live for. But if necessary, it is an ideal which I am willing to die for.”
Nelson Mandela expressed in the plea he made in his defense before the Pretoria High Court in 1964, the South African revolutionary born on July 18, 1918 in The Eastern Cape, who received the Nobel Peace Prize and was the first black president of South Africa.
After graduating as a lawyer in 1942, he joined the ranks of the African National Congress (ANC), an organization that at the time promoted peaceful protests against the segregationist regime and the excessive exploitation suffered by black South Africans in a society where they were the majority.
Some time later he founded the Youth League and gained notoriety within the ANC with his Civil Disobedience Campaign, and in the Congress of the Peoples, where he adopted the Freedom Charter or declaration of principles in the anti-apartheid struggle; for his revolutionary actions he was sentenced to life imprisonment, after 27 years of imprisonment he was freed in 1990.
A great friend of the largest Antillean republic, he recognized the decisive role played by Cubans in the Angolan War and their victory over South Africa in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, which made possible the fall of apartheid in the southern African cone and the democratization of the country; Mandela stepped on Cuban soil on July 25, 1991 and received the José Martí Order, a recognition granted by the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba from the hands of the historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, who emphasized the integrity of his character and affirmed that Madiba is “one of the most extraordinary symbols of this era”.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and was democratically elected as president of his country, a position he held from 1994 to 1999, a period in which he made efforts to reconcile South Africans and contributed to the cessation of several conflicts in the continent; he was named Father of the Nation and received countless international awards for his deeply humanist thinking and for promoting social programs that contributed to consolidate racial peace in South Africa.
Since 2010, the United Nations established the celebration of July 18 as Nelson Mandela Day, in recognition of his contribution to the end of the apartheid regime in his country, the liberation and unity of Africa, and for embodying universal values: peace, forgiveness, humility, integrity, passion, respect and service.
