Mandela!

This week marks the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from Robbin Island -- the prison where the anti-apartheid activist was held for 27 years for opposing South Africa's government, which enforced its strict segregation laws through brutality. Following his release, Mandela worked with South Africa's white president, F.W. de Klerk, to end those policies.

Mandela was already in prison when he was convicted of treason in 1964 and given a life sentence. He was a living symbol of the struggle against South Africa’s racist apartheid system, enacted when he was 30 years old.

In his last public words before he was jailed, Nelson Mandela said, “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony, and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realized. But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Fortunately for all of us, he didn’t have to.

The African National Congress elected Mandela as its president, and he won South Africa's presidential election in a landslide in 1994, the country's first black president. His was a triumph for the nation and the world.