Mandela has been central to every stage of South Africa’s epic struggle against apartheid – from formulating a new approach in the 1940s to leading the mass struggles of the 1950s, from the formation of Umkhonto we Siswe in the early 1960s to imprisonment for 27 years. He initiated and led negotiations in the 1990s, and served as the first President of a democratic South Africa. He built a new nation from the fragments of conflict.
