Thinkers Timeline

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African lawyer, freedom fighter, and statesman. He led the long struggle to end apartheid, the racist system that ruled South Africa from 1948 to 1994. He was born on 18 July 1918 in Mvezo, a small village in the Eastern Cape. He was given the name Rolihlahla, which in Xhosa roughly means 'pulling the branch of a tree' or, informally, 'troublemaker'. A teacher gave him the English name Nelson when he started school. He came from a Thembu royal family. His father died when Nelson was nine, and he was raised at the royal court. He trained as a lawyer in Johannesburg. With his friend Oliver Tambo, he opened the first Black law firm in South Africa in 1952. Black South Africans had almost no rights under apartheid. They could not vote, were forced to live in poor 'townships', and had to carry passes to enter white areas. Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1943. He helped lead peaceful campaigns through the 1950s. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, when police killed 69 unarmed Black protesters, he changed his mind about non-violence. In 1961 he co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the armed wing of the ANC. He was arrested in 1962 and put on trial for sabotage. In 1964 he was sentenced to life in prison. He served 27 years, mostly on Robben Island. He was released on 11 February 1990. He led the negotiations that ended apartheid. He became South Africa's first democratically elected president in 1994. He died on 5 December 2013, aged 95.

Steve Biko (1946-1977) was a South African activist and philosopher. He was born in King William's Town in the Eastern Cape, and grew up under the apartheid system, which separated South Africans by race and gave white South Africans almost all political, economic, and social power. He studied medicine at the University of Natal, one of the few universities that allowed Black students at that time, though they were kept in a separate section. There he became politically active and helped found the South African Students Organisation in 1968. He left the white-led liberal student movement because he believed that Black liberation could not be led by white people, even sympathetic ones: Black people had to lead and define their own liberation. He developed the philosophy of Black Consciousness, which argued that before political liberation could succeed, Black South Africans had to overcome the psychological damage of apartheid: the internalised sense of inferiority that the system had deliberately produced. He was banned, arrested, and tortured by the South African security police. He died in police custody in September 1977, aged thirty years old. His death caused international outrage and strengthened opposition to the apartheid regime.