As a law student Mandela became involved in political opposition to the white minority regime's denial of political, social and economic rights to South Africa's black majority. Joining the African National Congress in 1942, he founded its more dynamic Youth League two years later together with Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and others.
After the 1948 election victory in of the Afrikaner-dominated National Party with its Apartheid policy of racial segregation, Mandela was prominent in the ANC's 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People, whose adoption of the Freedom Charter provided the fundamental programme of the anti-apartheid cause.
Initially committed to non-violent mass struggle and acquitted in the marathon Treason Trial of 1956-61, Mandela and his colleagues accepted the case for armed action after the shooting of unarmed protesters at Sharpeville in March 1960 and the subsequent banning of the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups.
In 1961 he became the commander of the ANC's armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, or MK). In August 1962 he was arrested and jailed for five years for illegal travel abroad and incitement to strike. In June 1964 he was sentenced again, this time to life imprisonment, for his involvement in planning armed action.
Mandela stayed in prison until 11 February 1990, when sustained ANC campaigning and international pressure led to his release on the orders of state president F.W. de Klerk. Henceforth leader of the ANC until December 1997, Mandela led the negotiations which ended minority rule, and on 10 May 1994 he became the first black president of South Africa, handing over to Thabo Mbeki in June 1999.
The authorized biography of Nelson Mandela was written by [Anthony Sampson]?, ISBN 0-6797-8178-1 (amazon.com, search)
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