Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandelawas a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as President of the African National Congressparty from 1991 to 1997...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionWorld Leader
Date of Birth18 July 1918
CityMvezo, South Africa
For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.
The question of crime is one of concern to everybody. But the position is that the security forces in our country for the last four decades did not concentrate on suppressing crime. Their main objective was to suppress, to crush political activity. And in the process, crime grew to unacceptable proportions. And criminals were able to form powerful syndicates, and they virtually took over the control of the life of the community in certain areas.
Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward.
Where people of goodwill get together and transcend their differences for the common good, peaceful and just solutions can be found even for those problems which seem most intractable.
If you are negotiating you must do so in a spirit of reconciliation, not from the point of view of issuing ultimatums.
Leaders will have to give clear and decisive leadership towards a world of tolerance and respect for difference, and an uncompromising commitment to peaceful solutions of conflicts and disputes.
Although Verwoerd thought Africans were lower than animals, his death did not yield us any pleasure. Political assassination is not something I or the ANC ever supported. It is a primitive way of contending with an opponent
I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul. / I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul.
I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.
MY greatest regret in life is that I never became the heavyweight boxing champion ofthe world.
Take it upon yourself where you live to make people around you joyful and full of hope.
Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.
The suffering inflicted, and more often than not on the most vulnerable sectors of society, demeans all of us as humanity. That it is invariably women, children, the aged and disabled who suffer in these conflicts stands to the added shame of humankind.
The time is always right to do right