Mandela in Politics It started when African National Congress (ANC) Youth League is formed on Easter Sunday, 1944, at the

Bantu Mens s Social Center on Eloff Street. Anton Lembede wa s elected the president, Oliver Tambo, the secretary, and Walter Sisulu became t he treasurer. A.P. Mda, Jordan Ngubane, Lionel Majombozi, Congress Mbata, David Bopape and Mandela were elected to the executive committee.They were later joine d by such prominent young men as Godfrey Pidje, a student (later teacher then la wyer; Arthur Letele, Wilson Conco, Diliza Mji and Nthato Modana, all medical doc tors; Dan Tloome, a trade unionist; and Joe Matthews, Duma Nokwe, and Robert Sub ukwe, all students. Branches were soon established in all the provinces. In early 1940 s Mandela marry Evelyn Mase, his first wife and in 1946, his first s on, Madiba Thembekile was born. His first daughter, Makaziwe, died nine month af ter her birth in 1947. Lembede died at the age of thirty-three in July 1947. Lem bede s position in the Youth League was succeeded by Mda. The Youth League become more arranged under Mda s reign. In the same year, Mandela was elected to the Exec utive Committee of the Transvaal ANC. After the 1948 election victory of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party, wh ich supported the apartheid policy of racial segregation, Mandela began actively participating in politics. In 1950, he had been coopted onto the National Execu tive Committee of the ANC, taking the place of Dr Xuma, who had resigned after h is failure to be reelected president-general. In 1951, he became the National pr esident of the Youth League. He led prominently in the ANC's 1952 Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Law and the 1955 Congress of the People, whose adoption of the Freedom Charter provided the fundamental basis of the anti-apartheid cause. During this time, Mandela an d fellow lawyer Oliver Tambo operated the law firm of Mandela and Tambo, providi ng free or low-cost legal counsel to many blacks who lacked attorney representat ion Mahatma Gandhi influenced Mandela's approach, and subsequently the methods of su cceeding generations of South African anti-apartheid activists. (Mandela later t ook part in the 29 30 January 2007 conference in New Delhi marking the 100th anniv ersary of Gandhi's introduction of satyagraha (non-violent resistance) in South Africa). In 1953, Evelyn give birth to Makaziwe, named after daughter Mandela l ost six years before. The couple had also Makgatho as their second son. Then the y divorced. Initially committed to nonviolent resistance, Mandela and 155 others were arres ted on 5 December 1956 and charged with treason. The period covered by the indic tment was October 1, 1952, through December 13, 1956; it included the Defiance C ampaign, the Sophiatown removal, and the Congress of the People. The marathon Tr eason Trial of 1956 1961 followed, with all defendants receiving acquittals. On Ju ne 14, 1958, Mandela marry his second wife, Nomzano Winifred Madikizela, or know n as Winnie. Winnie and Mandela first daughter, Zewani, was born in 4th of Febru ary 1958. From 1952 1959, a new class of black activists known as the Africanists disrupted ANC activities in the townships, demanding more drastic steps against the Nation al Party regime. The ANC leadership under Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Walte r Sisulu felt not only that the Africanists were moving too fast but also that t hey challenged their leadership. The ANC leadership consequently bolstered their position through alliances with small White, Coloured, and Indian political parties in an attempt to give the ap pearance of wider appeal than the Africanists. The Africanists ridiculed the 195 5 Freedom Charter Kliptown Conference for the concession of the 100,000-strong A NC to just a single vote in a Congressional alliance. Four secretaries-general of the five participating parties secretly belonged to the reconstituted South African Communist Party (SACP). In 2003 Blade Nzimande, the SACP General Secretary, revealed that Walter Sisulu, the ANC Secretary-Gene ral, secretly joined the SACP in 1955 which meant all five Secretaries General w

ere SACP and thus explains why Sisulu relegated the ANC from a dominant role to one of five equals. In 1959, the ANC lost its most militant support when most of the Africanists, wi th financial support from Ghana and significant political support from the Trans vaal-based Basotho, broke away to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) under t he direction of Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo. In 1961, Mandela s second daug hter with Winnie, Zindziswa, was born. Armed anti-apartheid activities In 1961 Mandela became leader of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (transl ated Spear of the Nation, and also abbreviated MK), which he co-founded. He coor dinated sabotage campaigns against military and government targets, making plans for a possible guerrilla war if the sabotage failed to end apartheid. Mandela a lso raised funds for MK abroad and arranged for paramilitary training of the gro up. Fellow ANC member Wolfie Kodesh explains the bombing campaign led by Mandela: "W hen we knew that we [sic] going to start on 16 December 1961, to blast the symbo lic places of apartheid, like pass offices, native magistrates courts, and thing s like that ... post offices and ... the government offices. But we were to do i t in such a way that nobody would be hurt, nobody would get killed." Mandela sai d of Wolfie: "His knowledge of warfare and his first hand battle experience were extremely helpful to me." Mandela described the move to armed struggle as a last resort; years of increasi ng repression and violence from the state convinced him that many years of non-v iolent protest against apartheid had not and could not achieve any progress. Man dela undergo military training at Addis Ababa for eight weeks under Lieutenant W ondoni Befikadu, an experienced soldier in Ethopia, who had fought with the unde rground against the Italians. In June 1961, Mandela sent a letter to South African newspapers warning the gove rnment, that if they did not meet their demands, the Umkhonto we Sizwe would emb ark on a campaign of sabotage. The letter demanded the government accept a call for a national constitutional convention. The demands were not met by the govern ment. Beginning on 16 December 1961, the Umkhonto we Sizwe with Mandela as its leader, launched a bombing campaign against government targets with the first action of the campaign being the bombing of an electricity sub-station. In total, over th e next eighteen months, the Umkhonto we Sizwe would initiate dozens more acts of sabotage and bombings. The South African government alleged more acts of sabotage had been carried out and at the Rivonia trial the accused would be charged with 193 acts of sabotage in total. The campaign of sabotage against the government included attacks on go vernment posts, machines, power facilities, and crop burning in various places i ncluding Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban. Later, mostly in the 1980s, MK, the organisation co-founded by Mandela, waged a guerrilla war against the apartheid government in which many civilians became ca sualties. For example, the Church Street bomb in Pretoria killed 19 people and i njured 217. After he had become President, Mandela later admitted that the ANC, in its struggle against apartheid, also violated human rights, criticising those in his own party who attempted to remove statements mentioning this from the re ports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Until July 2008 Mandela and ANC party members were barred from entering the Unit ed States except to visit the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan without a spe cial waiver from the US Secretary of State, because of their South African apart heid-era designation as terrorists. Arrest and Rivonia trial On 5 August 1962 Mandela was arrested after living on the run for seventeen mont hs, and was imprisoned in the Johannesburg Fort. A large number of groups have b een accused of tipping off the police about Mandela s whereabouts including the So uth African Communist Party, Mandela s host in Durban, G.R. Naidoo, and the CIA, b

ut Mandela himself considers none of these connections to be credible and instea d attributes his arrest to his own carelessness in concealing his movements. Of the CIA link in particular, Mandela's official biographer Anthony Sampson believ es that "the claim cannot be substantiated." Three days later, the charges of leading workers to strike in 1961 and leaving t he country illegally without valid travel documents were read to him during a co urt appearance. On 25 October 1962, Mandela was sentenced to five years in priso n. While Mandela was imprisoned, police arrested prominent ANC leaders on 11 July 1 963, at Liliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, north of Johannesburg. Mandela was brought in, and at the Rivonia Trial (October 9, 1963) they were charged by the chief prose cutor Dr. Percy Yutar with four charges of the capital crimes of sabotage (which Mandela admitted) and crimes which were equivalent to treason, but easier for t he government to prove. The charge sheet at the trial listed 193 acts of sabotag e in total. They were charged with the preparation and manufacture of explosives, according to evidence submitted, included 210,000 hand grenades, 48,000 anti-personnel min es, 1,500 time devices, 144 tons of ammonium nitrate, 21.6 tons of aluminum powd er and a ton of black powder. They were also charged with plotting a foreign inv asion of South Africa, which Mandela denied. The specifics of the charges to whi ch Mandela admitted complicity involved conspiring with the African National Con gress and South African Communist Party to the use of explosives to destroy wate r, electrical, and gas utilities in the Republic of South Africa. Bram Fischer, Vernon Berrang, Joel Joffe, Arthur Chaskalson and George Bizos were part of the defence team that represented the main accused. Harry Schwarz repre sented Jimmy Kantor, who was not a member of the ANC or MK; Kantor was acquitted long before the end of the trial. Harold Hanson was brought in at the end of th e case to plead mitigation. In his statement from the dock at the opening of the defence case in the trial o n 20 April 1964 at Pretoria Supreme Court, Mandela laid out the reasoning in the ANC's choice to use violence as a tactic. His statement described how the ANC h ad used peaceful means to resist apartheid for years until the Sharpeville Massa cre. That event coupled with the referendum establishing the Republic of South A frica and the declaration of a state of emergency along with the banning of the ANC made it clear to Mandela and his compatriots that their only choice was to r esist through acts of sabotage. Doing otherwise would have been tantamount to unconditional surrender. Mandela w ent on to explain how they developed the Manifesto of Umkhonto we Sizwe on 16 De cember 1961 intent on exposing the failure of the National Party's policies afte r the economy would be threatened by foreigners' unwillingness to risk investing in the country. He closed his statement with these words: "During my lifetime I have dedicated m yself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white dominat ion, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and w ith equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." All except Rusty Bernstein were found guilty, but they escaped the gallows and w ere sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964. Although many saw Mandela as a political prisoner, Amnesty International did not consider him as the group " rejects the proposal to recognize as prisoners of conscience people who use or a dvocate the use of force." However, Amnesty International campaigned against the harsh conditions Mandela experienced while imprisoned. The trial is watched internationally. There are demonstrations throughout South Africa. International trade union had protested the trial. Dockworkers union arou nd the world threatened not to handle South African goods. The Russian prime min ister, Leonid Brezhnev, wrote to Dr. Verwoerd (South African prime minister) ask ing for leniency. Members of the United States Congress protested. Fifty members of the British Parliament had staged a march in London. Alex Doug las-Home, the British foreign secretary, was rumored to be working behind the sc

ene to help their cause. Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. representatives at the U.N., wrote a letter saying his government would do everything it could to prevent a d eath sentence. These factors pressured Mr. Quartus de Wet (judge of Rivonia Tria l) to give Mandela life sentence apart from death sentence.