--- title: Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) | TIME description: A look back at the life and career of Nelson Mandela. Narrated by TIME's former managing editor, Richard Stengel canonical: https://time.com/video/lqBrwxyF/ og:title: Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) og:description: A look back at the life and career of Nelson Mandela. Narrated by TIME's former managing editor, Richard Stengel og:url: https://time.com/video/lqBrwxyF/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/lqBrwxyF/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) twitter:description: A look back at the life and career of Nelson Mandela. Narrated by TIME's former managing editor, Richard Stengel twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/lqBrwxyF/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) [Watch (HLS stream): Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/lqBrwxyF.m3u8) (3:01)  _Published 2013-12-05. A look back at the life and career of Nelson Mandela. Narrated by TIME's former managing editor, Richard Stengel_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:36 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Nelson Mandela’s 95 Year Journey Comes to an End](/video/JSqmPKbw/) ### Nelson Mandela’s 95 Year Journey Comes to an End [World Reacts To Nelson Mandela's Passing](/video/nkpU2trX/) ### World Reacts To Nelson Mandela's Passing [Nelson Mandela's Life and Leadership](/video/CxEd6Igs/) ### Nelson Mandela's Life and Leadership --- ## Transcript >> Nelson Mandela was born in the Transkei of South Africa in 1918, a rural and remote part of South Africa. He was the son of a headman that is a chief of a local village, but his father died when he was young and he was taken to a nearby village and raised by the King of the Thembu in the royal court and that influenced his ideas of leadership for the rest of his life. But when he was 18, he ran away to Johannesburg and went to law school and more importantly joined the African National Congress, which shaped his life. The struggle is my life he famously said in the ANC. It was the focus of that struggle. He became the head of the youth league of the ANC. He led the defiance campaign for the ANC. Eventually, he went underground and started the military wing of the ANC [ unk ] and it was while he was underground in 1960 that he was arrested and tried in the famous Rivonia Trial and sentenced to life in prison on Robben Island. What Robben Island did for Nelson Mandela is it acted as a kind of crucible for him. It refined a way all of those traits of that young headstrong man who went in. He came out as a measured, considered, strong, compressed person who understood not only other people, but understood himself. So many people after his release said and would say to me it's extraordinary that he's not bitter. But in all the days and hours we spent together, I discovered that Nelson Mandela was plenty bitter. He had enormous anger against the system, against people who had oppressed him, and particularly the people who had oppressed his wife, but he understood in a very deep and core way and he learned this while he was in Robben Island that he could never show his bitterness. What he needed to show was the face of forgiveness and the face of reconciliation and that his strength and his power came from showing that face and never letting people see his own anger, his own bitterness, his own sadness for losing basically his entire adult life being separated from his family, from his wife, from his children. In all the time that Mandela and I worked together, he was always keen. He always stressed that he wanted to make sure that he was depicted as a man of flesh and blood, not a man made of marble on a pedestal, but a man who had weaknesses and flaws. And the great genius of Nelson Mandela, the great heroism of Nelson Mandela was not that he had no flaws, but that he triumphed over them, that he had weaknesses that he understood and compensated for. That is what a hero does. That's what Nelson Mandela has always done and that is why he continued to be an inspiration for everyone around the world. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)","description":"A look back at the life and career of Nelson Mandela. 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