Mandela - a lawyer at his core...

He attended Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he described in his own words his first tentative steps in the profession: 'In 1951, after I had completed my articles at Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman, I went to work for the law firm of Terblanche & Briggish. When I completed my articles, I was not yet a fully-fledged attorney, but I was in a position to draw court pleadings, send out summonses, interview witnesses - all of which an attorney must do before a case goes to court. After leaving Sidelsky, I had investigated a number of white firms - there were, of course, no African law firms. I was particularly interested in the scale of fees charged by these firms and was outraged to discover that many of the most blue-chip law firms charged Africans even higher fees for criminal and civil cases than they did their far wealthier white clients. ... In August of 1952, I opened my own law office. ... Oliver Tambo was then working for a firm called Kovalsky and Tuch. I often visited him there during his lunch hour, and made a point of sitting in a Whites Only chair in the Whites Only waiting room. ...It seemed natural for us to practise together and I asked him to join me. ... 'Mandela and Tambo' read the brass plate on our office door in Chancellor House, a small building just across the street from the marble statues of justice standing in front of the Magistrate's Court in central Johannesburg. Our building, owned by Indians, was one of the few places where Africans could rent offices in the city. From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyers in SA, but we were the only firm of African lawyers. For Africans, we were the firm of first choice and last resort.'

Working as a lawyer, he was frequently arrested for seditious activities, notes Legalbrief, and, along with other ANC leaders, was prosecuted for high treason from 1956 to 1961 but was found not guilty. In association with the SA Communist Party he co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, leading a bombing campaign against government targets. He was arrested, convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.

The Rivonia trial was perhaps the most significant political case in our legal history, writes Legalbrief. The trial of the State versus the National High Command and others, not only produced evidence of a sensational underground conspiracy but also created in accused Number One, Nelson Mandela, an internationally feted symbol of resistance to apartheid, according to a report on the News24 site. Mandela's statement from the dock, protected against banning or censorship by court privilege, was an exposition of the ANC's view of apartheid, its motives for resisting it, and its methods and goals - all couched in the articulate words of a trained lawyer. In time it became an oft-quoted manifesto for the entire struggle against racial discrimination in SA. It took several months before public interest in the proceedings in Pretoria's Palace of Justice took hold. In the end it became a national cause celebre , also attracting unprecedented international media and political attention. Full report on the News24 site Mandela obituary Life and times of Mandela Tributes from around the world Madiba: A symbol of the power of good