Nelson Mandela

Known and loved around the world for his commitment to peace, negotiation and reconciliation, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was South Africa's first democratically elected president (1994-1999). Mandela was an anti-apartheid revolutionary and political leader, as well as a philanthropist with an abiding love for children. Mandela was born into the Xhosa royal family on 18 July 1918 and died on 5 December 2013. Before his death in 2013 at the age of 95, the former President of South Africa, led an extraordinary life. From 25 years of imprisonment, to becoming the first democratically elected President of his nation and jointly winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his 1994 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom Mandela describes how education intertwined the different events in his life. He discusses the Western-style English-language education he received at mission schools as a boy, and how the feelings of inadequacy it fostered among his people resulted in anger and even social uprising: “it was not lack of ability that limited my people, but lack of opportunity… We were taught that the …best men were Englishmen.”
Throughout his long life and even his imprisonment, Mandela made a point to keep educating himself – seeing learning as an escape from his confines. Even just days before the trial at which he could have been served a death sentence, he was writing papers for his law degree.
He even inspired his fellow prisoners to do the same: “At night, our cell block seemed more like a study hall than a prison… Robben Island was known as ‘the University’ […] because of what we learnt from each other”.