How did Nelson Mandela end apartheid?

Nelson Mandela's role in ending apartheid was a decades-long journey through activism, armed resistance, imprisonment, negotiation, and reconciliation — a political odyssey that demonstrated extraordinary moral courage and strategic intelligence.

Mandela joined the African National Congress in 1944 and initially embraced nonviolent resistance. But after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 — when police killed 69 peaceful protesters — and the government's banning of the ANC, he concluded that nonviolence alone would not defeat a regime willing to use lethal force against unarmed citizens. He co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the ANC's armed wing, which carried out sabotage against government infrastructure. He traveled Africa and Europe seeking military training and support.

Arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, Mandela spent 27 years in prison — most of them on Robben Island, breaking rocks in a limestone quarry. But imprisonment did not silence him; it amplified his message. He became the world's most famous political prisoner, a symbol of apartheid's injustice. The Free Mandela campaign mobilized international opinion. Inside prison, he studied Afrikaner language and history, developing the understanding of his adversaries that would prove essential in negotiations.

Mandela's prison years transformed him from a fiery young activist into a statesman. He secretly initiated negotiations with the apartheid government in the late 1980s, recognizing that a negotiated transition was preferable to either indefinite stalemate or destructive civil war. When F.W. de Klerk released him on February 11, 1990, Mandela emerged not calling for vengeance but for reconciliation.

The negotiations that followed were extraordinarily difficult. Hardliners on both sides — white extremists who wanted to preserve white rule and radical activists who wanted revolutionary transformation — threatened to derail the process. Violence between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party killed thousands. Mandela's leadership was essential: he had the moral authority to bring his constituency along, the strategic sense to make necessary compromises, and the vision to articulate a future that could include all South Africans.

The 1994 election — in which millions of Black South Africans voted for the first time — was won by Mandela in a landslide. His presidency (1994–1999) prioritized reconciliation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission offered amnesty in exchange for full disclosure of political crimes — a radical alternative to both blanket amnesty and retributive justice. Mandela's gestures of reconciliation — wearing a Springbok rugby jersey, visiting the widow of apartheid's architect Hendrik Verwoerd — demonstrated that leadership could transform enemies into fellow citizens. His legacy is not merely the end of apartheid but the demonstration that even the deepest injustice can be addressed through moral courage and political wisdom.