Nelson Mandela as an Attorney

Nelson Mandela

As an attorney and the son of a tribal chief, Nelson Mandela was in a perfect position to understand and therefore directly change the laws of postcolonial South Africa. Mandela would later become a victim of the oppressive regimes that characterized life for indigenous Africans. While with the African National Congress and the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), Mandela also used grassroots political activism to draw support for African self-governance. Mandela was first tried for treason in a drawn-out case lasting for five years before he was acquitted in 1961. Undoubtedly his brush with the law inspired Mandela to use the system to his favor and to the favor of all non-white residents of Southern Africa. Because of his vocal opposition to apartheid programs and his involvement with the nationalist group African National Congress (ANC), Mandela spent almost three decades of his life in prison and labor camps. In spite of his imprisonment Mandela continued to work as an attorney and political activist, and therefore helped transform South African law without the use of military force. His endeavors and his success in minimizing colonial oppression earned Mandela the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Mandela was primarily concerned with eliminating apartheid, the state-sanctioned race-based segregation and oppression in South Africa. In 1952, the African National Congress launched the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws. Nelson Mandela served as the National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Campaign. The Campaign used techniques of civil disobedience and peaceful resistance to draw public attention to the cause with the ultimate goal of eliminating the laws that sustained apartheid, segregation, and oppression. The Defiance campaign drew volunteers from all around the country. It was for his work with the Defiance Campaign that Mandela was tried for treason and later acquitted. However, the courts did limit his ability to organize, a last-ditch attempt to squelch the opposition movement. By this time, Mandela had earned his law degree and opened a practice in Johannesburg by 1952 with partner Oliver Tambo. The practice focused on apartheid-related cases, such as those that dealt with land-use laws that blatantly discriminated against indigenous Africans. Interestingly, the authorities forced Mandela and Tambo's practice out of the city based on the very laws they were trying to change. Being forced to move their practice highlighted the need for rapid and thorough changes to the law.

After a few years in practice, Mandela also worked on cases involving labor laws, university segregation, Bantustan segregation, and Pass laws, which restricted the free movement of black Africans. His work unearthed layer upon layer of unjust civil laws that systematically oppressed the native population of the region. For example, Bantustan laws referred to the setting aside of parcels of land expressly for the use of black Africans, but the system only served the best interests of the white-controlled government. Police brutality was also common on Bantustan lands ("Biography of Nelson Mandela"). In 1960, the authorities banned the African National Congress, signaling an impending crisis.