Sakharov Network

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 1993 Nobel Peace Laureate, born in 1918 in Umtata, South Africa, was elected President and Head of Government of the Republic of South Africa in the first free elections in 1994. He has spent the greater part of his life behind bars. As leader of the ANC (African National Congress), he symbolised, for his fellow countrymen and the public worldwide, the resistance of black people to the oppressive apartheid regime. When he was awarded the prize in 1988 Mandela was still under house arrest.

Retired from the public life in June 1999, he remains committed to his ideals and his values in his two charities, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, as well as in the initiative Global Elders which he launched on 18 July 2007 in Johannesburg together with Graça Machel and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This project includes a group of world leaders, peace activists and human rights advocates whose goal is to solve global problems, using "almost 1000 years of collective experience to dream up solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems like climate change, HIV/AIDS, and poverty" and "use their political independence to help resolve some of the world's most intractable conflicts".

In his address during a Parliament sitting to mark 10years of democracy in South Africa, Nelson Mandela said: 'A guiding principle in our search for and establishment of a non-racial inclusive democracy in our country has been that there are good men and women to be found in all groups and from all sectors of society; and that in an open and free society those South Africans will come together to jointly and co-operatively realise the common good. Historical enemies succeeded in negotiating a peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy exactly because we were prepared to accept the inherent capacity for goodness in the other'.