Nelson Mandela: A legacy of freedom

Mandela was a key figure in the African National Congress. His activities on behalf of the liberation movement resulted in imprisonment for treason. After his release, he was elected South Africa's president in 1994. After his retirement in 1999, he remained active as Africa's leading statesman. His death in December 2013 at age 95 was met with a worldwide outpouring of grief.

European colonialists introduced a system of white minority rule known as apartheid in the 1940s. It included a basic racial classification system, in which South Africans were categorized as 'white', 'native', 'coloured' or 'Indian' and forcefully segregated. Resistance leaders like Mandela sought to replace the system with a 'rainbow nation'.

On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town as part of a negotiated settlement to end apartheid. The resistance icon and his wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela greeted the crowds with clinced fists raised high. Many of those gathered that day had never seen their hero. Mandela had spent 27 years in jail, mostly on Robben Island off the tip of Africa.

Generations of South Africans had suffered violently enforced policies of racial oppression, discrimination and segregation by the time the white minority regime had begun to fall apart. In the late 1980s secret negotiations for a handover of power came just as a violent anti-apartheid struggle gathered momentum. Demands for the release of Mandela and other political prisoners took center stage.

In recognition of their efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid, Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk - South Africa's last white leader - were jointly awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. The following year Mandela became the country's first democratically elected – and first black president – and appointed de Klerk as one of his deputies.

Mandela was at heart a Pan-African. He flew to Zambia, Tanzania and Nigeria to express his gratitude for their support in fighting aparthied. Mandela never tired of helping African leaders find peace, whether it was in Zaire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi or Lesotho. The outcome was not always positive, but Mandela made it clear that he wanted African unity, development and peace.

Following Mandela's release from prison, Africans were drawn to South Africa and its promise of a rainbow nation. Nigerians, Burundians and Congolese fleeing conflict were granted refuge, while Zimbabweans, Ethiopians and Somalis embraced the free nation. Since the mid-2000s xenophobia has spread in the country and South African mobs have turned violently against their fellow Africans.