Synopsis of the Essay

Nelson Mandela: Peacemaker or Politician

Thesis Statement: Nelson Mandela is important to history as a symbolic icon than as a President because he was a symbol to the civil rights movement, became the first black president based solely on his status, and he brought world recognition to the Apartheid regime

HISTORIOGRAPHY: Nelson Rolihlahala Mandela, born 18 July, 1918 is a former President of South Africa, the first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election.

  • Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and politician leaders of our time, an international hero whose life long dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidency of his country.[1]
  • Judy Woodruff, a CNN anchor says Nelson Mandela bring out the best in us, he inspires us to do our best, who causes us to take our eyes off the immediate and think about the longer term, the bigger picture.[2]
  • The event that highlighted his legacy as President was when Mandela took a particular interest in the dispute between Prime Minister Muammar Al- Gaddafi of Libya and the United States. In the trial of two Libyans who were indicted in November 1991 and accused of sabotaging Pan Am Flight 103.[3]

ARGUMENT #1: Nelson Mandela From the 1950’s to 1964 was a civil rights activist, before Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, for the South African people joined the only political party could stop the Apartheid regime.

  • On 1993 the world saw the re-emergence of a leader who stood for his people against the Apartheid regime who would win the Nobel Peace Prize and his name in Nelson Mandela.[4]
  • Nelson Mandela grew impatient with the slow results non violence and resorted to violence in planning the sabotage of a government building but it was this that helped him bring world recognition to the Apartheid regime.[5]

ARGUMENT # 2: Pixley Ka Izaka Seme, the founder of the African National Congress has had impressive milestone with and without Nelson Mandela, in 1939 the African National Congress was fighting the National Party and critized them for robbing the Africans of their land and called it a new form of slavery.

  • On the May 10, 1994 Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the President of South Africa, but despite his victory tension remained high, and some accusations election fraud surfaced by the National Party.[6]
  • When Nelson Mandela became the leader of the ANC he helped write the freedom charter, which emphasized that the people should govern themselves, that all political parties should have equal rights, that the country’s wealth should be shared amongst the working people, and all men are equal under the law.[7]

ARGUMENT # 3: Apartheid was a system of legalised racial segregation enforced by the National Party South Africa government between 1948 and 1994.

  • Apartheid legislation classified South Africa’s inhabitants and visitors into racial groups, black, white, coloured and Indian and then separated them allocating grossly unequal civil rights.
  • The Apartheid system is often classified into two sections, grand Apartheid, which involves an attempt to division of South Africa into separate states, while petty Apartheid referred to the segregationist dimension.

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[3] ibid

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[5] ibid

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