Nelson Mandela's Timeline

• 18 July 1918 - Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela is born a member of the Madiba clan. His tribal name, Rolihlahla, means troublemaker. He is later given the name Nelson by a teacher at his school.
  
• 1937 - Mandela meets Oliver Tambo, who is to become a lifelong comrade-in-arms, at Fort Hare University.
  
• 1939 - Expelled from Fort Hare because of his involvement in a boycott of the students ‘representative council against university policy.
  
• 1943 - Joins the African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912 to oppose the white government.
  
• 1944 - Forms the youth league of the ANC with Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu. Marries his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase.
  
• 1952 - Opens the first black legal firm in South Africa with Tambo. They provide free or low-cost legal counsel to black people who would otherwise have no representation.
  
• 1953 - Africans turn against the ex-communists. Splits emerge in the ANC as Mandela and Sisulu come under fire from the rank-and-file, according to an article carrying one of the Guardian’s first mentions of Mandela.
  
• 1956 - Accused of conspiring to overthrow the government with 155 others and charged with high treason. All are acquitted in 1961.
  
• 1957 - Breakup of his marriage to Evelyn, which had produced three children.
  
• 1958 - Marries Nomzamo “Winnie” Madikizela. They have two children.
  
• 1960 - Police kill 69 peaceful protesters in the Sharpeville massacre. The ANC is banned; mandela goes into hiding and forms an underground military group.
  
• 1961 - Issues a call for armed resistance and becomes the ANC leader of the newly formed Umkhontoat guerilla movement. “When South African police search for Mandela and other strike leaders, they might remember he is an accomplished long-distance runner.”
  
• 1962 - South African ‘pimpernel’ arrested. Authorities finally catch the man who has eluded – and embarrassed – them for 15 months.
  
• 1962 - In his profile, Mary Benson describes Mandela as a man who combines authority with gentleness, militant dedication with gaiety and generosity with daring.
  
• 1962 - Mandela is imprisoned for five years for incitement and leaving the country illegally. He promises to carry on the struggle once he is released.
  
• 1964 - In this report for the Observer, Anthony Sampson, who covered the 1964 “Rivonia” trial in which Mandela and nine others were accused of trying to overthrow the state, reports that the prosecution has failed to sustain one important part of the indictment: that the accused were part of an international communist conspiracy.
  At the opening of the trial Mandela made this famous declaration: “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with 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”.
  
• 1968 - His mother dies and his eldest son is killed in a car crash. He is not allowed to attend either of the funerals.
  
• 1973 - In a rare interview from Robben Island, Mandela tells the Australian journalist David McNicoll that he never gets depressed because “I know that my cause will triumph”.
  
• 1976 - More than 600 are killed in protests at Soweto and Sharpeville.
  
• 1977 - Steve Biko, the leader of the protests, is killed while in police custody.
  
• 1985 - President PW Botha, offers Mandela release on the condition that he “unconditionally rejected violence as a political weapon.”
  Mandela declines, saying that the ANC had only adopted violence as a last resort “when other forms of resistance were no longer open to us.”
  
• 1988 - Music and politics come together for the Mandela concert at Wembley stadium. The most spectacular pop event since Live Aid features Sting, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder.
  
• 1988 - David Beresford, who attempts vainly to interview Mandela in hospital, writes of growing expectations that the 70-year-ol may soon be freed.
  
• 1989 - David Beresford explains why it took so long for Winnie Mandela’s alleged involvement in the abduction of four youths to come to light.
  
• 1989 - An encounter between Mandela and the outgoing Botha – described as a “contest between two cunning old bulls”- is picked over amid speculations as to who outwitted whom.
  
• 1989 - The new South African president, FW de Klerk, unveils sweeping reforms including the unbanning of the ANC and the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela.
  
• 1989 - How Mandela called all the shots: FW de Klerk may have captured the headlines with his dramatic announcement of changes, but Mandela was the absentee choreographer. There are not too many historical examples of someone playing such a key role from prison.
  
• 1990 - After almost three decades in prison, Mandela walks to freedom through the gates of Victor Verster jail near Cape Town, hand in hand with his wife, Winnie. He insisted on an immediate end to the state of emergency and the release of all political prisoners before negotiations with the government.
  
• 1990 - Would it be possible for Mandela to live up to his extraordinary image? To a remarkable extent he has, Allister Sparks writes after meeting him.
  
• 1990 - As Mandela receives a hero’s welcome at Wembley, Hugo Young writes: “Although the British have a unique capacity to turn on their heroes, it should be some time before this happens to Mandela”.
  
• 1990 - In their first meeting, Thatcher and Mandela did not see eye to eye completely on sanctions and renunciation of violence, but they wasted little time sparring.
  
• 1991 - Mandela visits countries including Ghana to seek support against apartheid.
  
• 1991 - Mandela becomes president of the ANC.
  
• 1992 - Mandela separates from Winnie Mandela
  
• 1993 - As he turns 75, Mandela reflects on his famous speech from the dock, his broken marriage and his support for the likes of Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi.
  
• 1993 - In a special appearance at the UN general assembly, Mandela calls for an end to international sanctions against South Africa. He declares: “Our common victory against the only system to be declared a crime against humanity since the defeat of Nazism is in sight.”
  
• 1993 - David Beresford assesses and contrasts FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela as they are jointly awarded Nobel peace prize.
  
• 1993 - Anthony Sampson reflects on Mandela’s strength: “His quarter-century in jail clearly gave him a much wider perspective and philosophical depth…he could exert authority over the South African government itself until, as Winnie put it, they were virtually his prisoners and he was the warder.”
  
• 1994 - Long lines of people queue in the sun to cast their votes. The ballot, Mandela declares, will turn the country away from turmoil towards reconciliation and nation-building.
  
• 1994 - De Klerk concedes victory to the ANC. “Now is the time for all South Africans to celebrate the birth of a new South Africa,” Mandela declares.
  
• 1994 - At 75, Mandela sworn in as president, the moment for which he seems to have been born, before an extraordinary guest list that includes Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro, Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Benazir Bhutto.
  
• 1995 - Mandela moves to end a marriage battered first by apartheid, then by personal and political conflicts.
  
• 1995 - Mandela invites to lunch the ruthless prosecutor, Percy Yutar who he faced in the courtroom thirty years earlier, to promote national reconciliation.
  
• 1996 - To mark sixth anniversary of his release from prison, Mandela returns to Robben Island and shows the quarry where he had hacked stones for 13 years.
  
• 1998 - Jubilation as Mandela weds. Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson lead 2,000 guests in double celebration of Mandela’s third marriage to Graa Machel, and his 80th. Birthday.
  
• 1998 - Few escape tarnish for apartheid as the truth and reconciliation commission issues its long-awaited report. Apartheid is condemned as a crime against humanity, but the report also accuses the ANC of gross human rights violations.
  
• 1999 - In this assessment of Mandela as he prepares to step down as president, the South African writer Andre Brink writes that he knows of no other person in a position of power – with the possible exception of Desmond Tutu – who so amply demonstrates the Xhosa dictum “I am human through other humans”.
  
• 1999 - After five years as president of post-apartheid South Africa, Mandela takes his bow. His political foes set aside the country’s myriad problems to shower praise on Mandela, who makes a characteristically modest speech.
  
• 1999 - Mandela returns to his home village, Qunu, where, unlike other African leaders, he has not undertaken grandiose projects. His contribution is a tunnel under the road so children can visit him safely.
  
• 1999 - Chris McGreal faults Mandela for failing to speak up for the likes of Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi and for courting dictators such as Muammar Gaddafi.
  
• 2002 - In his most significant intervention into politics since his retirement, Mandela calls on ANC leadership to curtail a futile debate about the causes of Aids and focus on combating the disease.
  
• 2003 - As Mandela grows increasingly frail, South Africans voice their fears for the nation’s fragile democracy once the former president passes from the scene.
  
• 2004 - Mandela lends his prestige to the global fight against poverty. He tells thousands at Trafalgar Square that “overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice”.
  
• 2005 - A spate of deaths, including that of his last surviving son, turns the world’s most admired statesman into one of its loneliest.
  
• 2009 - Mandela basks in the adulation of the crowds as he gives his public blessing to Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president-in-waiting. The occasion is tinged with wistfulness as Mandela makes what may prove his last appearance on the political stage.
  
• 2010 - Nelson Mandela receives a rapturous welcome at the closing ceremony of the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg. He is driven across the pitch in a golf cart with his wife Graa Machel in a symbolic finale for the biggest sporting event Africa has ever seen. Mandela had pulled out of the opening ceremony after his great-granddaughter died in a car crash the night before.
  
• 2011-13 - Mandela’s public appearance at the World Cup was his last. In the following years, his foundation sought to keep his legacy of social justice alive and have his birthday marked as Mandela Day.
  A digital archive of more than 1900 documents, photographs and films relating to his life and struggle was put online.
  At his home, and amid periods of illness, South Africa’s first black president contributed to receive visitors, including the family of the US’s first.