Apartheid and Nelson Mandela

Apartheid was a South African policy of complete legal separation of the races, including the banning of all social contacts between blacks and whites.

Nelson Mandela was born on 18 July 1918, in Transkei, South Africa. He is known as the leader of the African National Congress and for his lifelong struggle against apartheid, which was instituted in South Africa in 1948. The African National Congress was declared a terrorist organization, so Mandela was arrested in 1962 and imprisoned for life on terrorist charges, but in 1990 South African president F.W. de Klerk freed him. His release marked the beginning of the end of Apartheid.

Today, thanks to the self-sacrifice of Nelson Mandela, apartheid has been outlawed. Everyone in South Africa now has an equal opportunity at home and at work to live comfortable. Nelson Mandela is one the world's true freedom fighters, and his life and person triumphs are remembered long after the world has forgotten the evils of Apartheid. Mandela was awarded the Novel Peace Prize and in 1994 he was elected president of South Africa.

African Independence

After World War II, people of Africa were unwilling to return to colonial domination. And so, following the great global conflict, they, too, won their independence from foreign rule and went to work building new nations. They began to express their growing sense of pride in traditional Africa. Africans formed a movement to celebrate African culture, heritage, and values, it was called the Negritude movement. European nations employed two basic styles of government in Africa called direct and indirect. Colonies under indirect rule experienced an easier way to independence. So for colonies under direct rule to gain independence was more difficult. Some colonies even had to fight wars for freedom.

Later in 1947, there was a new leader called Kwame Nkrumah who worked to liberate the Gold Coast African colony. He was often imprisoned by the British government, but in 1957 his efforts were successful, he gained the Gold Coast colony's independence. Then he became the president of this colony and he made new schools, new roads, and expanded health facilities.