Nelson Mandela was born in 1918 in South Africa to a Thembu chief. Thirty years later he would start one of the most famous movements of our time, the anti-apartheid movement. Apartheid was an official policy of forced segregation of the races and was implemented in 1948 by the National Party when it came to power in South Africa. Under apartheid, all black citizens were forced to carry passbooks stating all of their information. Two laws, which were at the heart of apartheid, included the Population Registration Act, which labeled everyone in South Africa by race, and the Group Areas Act, which forced racial groups to live in different places. In a nutshell it was the white run government trying to separate everything between the black South African's and the white South African's. Both laws were put into place to establish apartheid, which literally means "apartness", the separation of the races. At that time 80% of the South African population was not white and barred from voting in elections. The head of this crazy idea was Prime Minister Daniel Malan, who was head of the National Party. He took racism and oppression to new heights, but Nelson Mandela dedicated his life to bringing it back down again. His life was not wasted. .
A little known fact about Nelson Mandela was that before his fight against apartheid, he was actually training to become a professional boxer. He gave this up to study law and battle the fight against injustice and never turned back. A young Mandela first started his struggle in 1940 when he was kicked out of the University of Fort Hare for his involvement in a demonstration against racial discrimination. Continuing his struggle in 1944 he helped establish the African National Congress (ANC), a multiracial movement that sought to bring democratic political change in South Africa. After the establishment of apartheid the ANC began a campaign known as the Defiance Campaign in 1952.
