Nelson Mandela

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in a small village in the Eastern Cape and given the name Nelson by a schoolteacher. He trained as a lawyer in Johannesburg and, with Oliver Tambo, opened the first Black law firm in the country, defending people caught by the ever-tightening apartheid laws.

He joined the African National Congress and, after peaceful protest was met with massacres, helped found its armed wing. In 1964 he was convicted of sabotage. At his trial he told the court that a democratic and free society was an ideal "for which I am prepared to die". He was sent to Robben Island, where he broke rocks in a limestone quarry, was allowed one letter every six months, and spent 18 of his 27 years in a cell barely two metres wide.

Prison did not harden him. He learned Afrikaans to understand his guards, studied by correspondence, and quietly opened talks with the government while refusing any release that came with conditions. When he walked free in February 1990, millions watched around the world.

Over the next four years he negotiated the end of apartheid while the country teetered on the edge of civil war. He won the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk and, in 1994, became president after South Africa's first election in which everyone could vote. He served a single term, set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission rather than seeking revenge, and stepped down voluntarily, an example that still stands out on a continent that had seen few leaders leave office willingly.