Today in History—June 12: Nelson Mandela Receives a Life Sentence
On this day in 1964, eight activist leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment for treason, sabotage, and conspiracy against South Africa’s apartheid government. Among them was Nelson Mandela, who would later become the country’s first Black president.
This was not Mandela’s first clash with the authorities. In 1940 he was expelled from college for joining a student protest (he later completed his B.A. and earned a law degree in prison).
In 1952 he was convicted for his role in a civil disobedience campaign and received a nine-month sentence of hard labor (suspended for two years). Four years later he was swept up in a mass police raid that targeted anti-apartheid activists, though he was ultimately acquitted.
The turning point came after the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, where police fired into a crowd of demonstrators, killing dozens. After that violent incident, Mandela helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the militant wing of the banned African National Congress political party. He was arrested in 1962 upon returning to South Africa after traveling abroad without a permit to help build support for armed resistance to apartheid.
Mandela was born into the Madiba clan of the Tembu people, and his birth name was Rolihlahla, which means “pulling the branches of a tree” or “troublemaker.”
Already serving a five-year sentence, he was brought to trial again in what became known as the Rivonia Trial. When proceedings began in October 1963, 10 defendants faced more than 190 charges of sabotage. All pleaded not guilty.
Mandela chose not to testify during the trial, instead delivering his hours-long statement from the dock—a defense of liberty that became a classic text, published as I Am Prepared to Die. At that point, death sentences seemed like a real possibility for the defendants.
But instead, Mandela and the seven others who were found guilty were sentenced to life in prison. His incarceration became a rallying point for the global anti-apartheid movement.
When he was finally released in 1990, he helped lead negotiations to end apartheid. And in 1994, he became the first democratically elected president of South Africa.
- 27: Years Mandela spent in prison
- 69: People killed in the Sharpeville massacre
- 5 years: Length of Mandela’s presidency
- 1429: William de la Pole, 1st duke of Suffolk, is taken prisoner by Joan of Arc
- 1707: Bahadur Shah I wins the Mughal throne at the Battle of Jajau
- 1967: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the ban on interracial marriage
