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Mandela's talent for leadership traces back to his tribal heritage as the son of a royal family of the Thembu tribe of the Xhosa people. After earning a law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, he joined the A.N.C. With classmate Oliver Tambo, he set up the first black law practice in South Africa in 1952. Defiantly working from a whites-only downtown neighborhood, they specialized in representing blacks who failed to carry the passes that were required of blacks in white neighborhoods.
Mandela and Tambo helped form the Youth League in 1944, and three years later drew up a program of action calling for strikes, boycotts and acts of civil disobedience. In 1955 they supported the Freedom Charter, an economic credo many considered to be socialist. But Mandela abandoned peaceful methods after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, in which police killed 69 black protesters. When Tambo left to establish a headquarters in exile, Mandela stayed behind to set up the A.N.C.'s underground military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) and launch a campaign of sabotage. After 17 months on the run, he was caught in 1962. He was convicted in June 1964 of attempting to overthrow the government along with seven others in the Rivonia trial. His sentence: life in prison.
In his years away, apartheid has acquired a more presentable face. The humiliating restrictions of petty apartheid have largely faded away. A sizable black middle class has sprung up, bringing with it consumer power that has not escaped the notice of white merchants. "Buppies" live in handsome Soweto neighborhoods like Diepkloof and drive their BMWs to work each day. Black businessmen make deals over lunch at trendy restaurants while being served by scurrying white waiters. Compared with blacks on the rest of the continent, many in South Africa live well. More, of course, do not.
But the main pillars of Hendrik Verwoerd's Grand Apartheid remain firmly in place, with no explicit commitment to remove them: the Population Registration Act still legally classifies people by race; the Group Areas Act still bars blacks from residing in most white neighborhoods or from sending their children to whites-only government schools; land acts dating back to 1913 and 1936 still reserve 87% of South Africa's land to whites, who today constitute 14% of the population.
Yet the issue is no longer really apartheid; it is political power. Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha explains that the government began to shift away from apartheid when the National Party realized that it was impossible to stem the tide of blacks moving to urban areas in search of employment. "As the economic realities overwhelmed the dream," he says, "so did we come to realize that there were consequences of these policies that were indeed oppressive and humiliating." Bowing to those realities, P.W. Botha scrapped the hated pass laws in 1986.