• It belongs to the Madiba clan of the xhosa ethnic group and is one of 13 children taken with his four wives, was born in 1918 in Mvezo. The father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa died in 1928 at the age of 48 victim of tuberculosis. The mother, Nonqaphi Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of the wives of Mphakanyiswa.

• Orphaned at age nine Rolihlahla Dalibhunga Mandela, received primary education in Clarkebury Boarding Institute of Engcobo, and high school in Fort Beaufort the Healdtown Methodist Boarding School.

• His primary teacher, a British missionary, gave him the Anglophone name of Nelson, which became valid for legal purposes.

• In 1939, after completing schooling, Mandela went to the city of Alice for graduating in law at Fort Hare University College, an academic institution reserved for non-white students.

• Being a member of the Council student of the University was involved in an academic dispute about an election outcome, which brought the expulsion of the classrooms in the third year of career, forced to finish his degree by correspondence in 1942.

• Mandela won the life in Johannesburg as watchman from a gold mine and then as a clerk in a law firm directed by whites. It was in the great city of the then Transvaal Province where Mandela made contact with purely political activism.

• In 1943, at the height of the second world war, Mandela joined to the African National Congress (ANC), black nationalism abanderada organization founded in 1912 and whose leadership they held at that time Alfred Bitini Xuma and James Calata.

• In the ANC Mandela began an intimate link with Walter Sisulu, a countryman of Transkei who earned his life as a real estate agent.

• It was Sisulu, had six years his senior, who introduced him to the law firm of white Johannesburg, opening the doors of a liberal profession to which very few blacks were able to access.

• After having met the cousin of Sisulu, Evelyn Evelyn Mase, nurse of 22 years, became the first wife of Mandela, 1944; with it I would have four children.

• Mandela, Sisulu, Tambo and other young militants, under the leadership of Anton Lembede intellectual, worked for the transformation of the ANC.

• In September 1944 launched the League of the youth of the African National Congress (ANCYL), which Mandela was elected Secretary three years later.

• His intense activity agitator and proselytizing brought you Mandela his first serious encounter with the justice weeks after running the campaign's challenge. Arrested in July, he was indicted on charges of violating the Suppression of communism Act, tried and eventually sentenced to imprisonment for nine months in prison with hard labour in December.

• In 1955 he broke away from Evelyn, whose filiation to the Jehovah's witnesses prevented involve in politics, and two years after the marriage ended in divorce.

• In June 1958 Mandela married social worker Nomzamo Winifred Zanyiwe Madikizela, a xhosa 18 years younger than him and who unlike the first wife was ready to engage to fund the movement for the liberation of its people and support the struggle of her husband, with all that it implied.

• Then famous and controversial Winnie Mandela, as it became known, gave the black leader other two daughters, Zenani, in 1959, and Zindziswa, in 1960.

• Arrested, imprisoned and prosecuted on several occasions, Mandela underwent his umpteenth and final arrest in the epilogue of the massacre in Sharpeville, Transvaal, on March 21, 1960, when police fired indiscriminately into a crowd of protesters, killing 69 people.

• The truth was that in December 1961, Mandela, convinced of the futility of the peaceful struggle against apartheid, was activated in hiding and assumed the leadership of the armed wing of the ANC, (Spear of the nation, also known by its acronym, MK).

• This dangerous shift, which was the result of a long process of political reflection, matured after the Sharpeville massacre, and not a hasty decision, began to attack with pretensions guerrilla Government installations and police targets.

• On June 12, 1964 (except Bernstein, who was acquitted) defendants were sentenced to imprisonment, draconian sentence that could have been worse, the prosecution initially requested the death penalty. Mandela and his comrades were interned in a module in isolation to political prisoners in Robben Island.

• To preserve his emotional state and his intellectual faculties in the harsh conditions of the Island prison, the inmate enrolled in education program at the University of London distance and got the title of Bachelor of Laws. It also cared for his physical state, trying to keep in shape with gymnastics tables.

• In August 1988, a month of her 70th birthday, Mandela contracted tuberculosis and spent a month and a half admitted to hospital Tygerberg Parrow, in Cape Town.

• In September he was transferred to the Constantiaberg clinic and in December gave it high. He did not return to Pollsmoor, but that it became a prison Victor Verster, near Paarl, where he was isolated in a large bungalow equipped with pool, gardens and private chef.