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Mandela, then 23, threw himself into city living, and then into politics. It was not easy. For a time he found a job as a night watchman in the gold mines. But his ambition was to become a lawyer, and with help from that other great South African political activist Walter Sisulu, he managed to get a job as a clerk in a white law firm. He also studied law at Wits University, from 1943-49, but without any great distinction, for he also had to hold down his job and was becoming increasingly involved in the political struggle for black African rights. In Johannesburg he had been forced – like other black South Africans – to travel on the ‘blacks only’ trams, and even at university he had been barred from a café because of his colour.
Mandela began to fight back. He joined in the successful mass boycott of the city’s buses after an increase in fares, and made contact with the African National Congress, the main black political group. In 1944 he joined the Executive Committee of the ANC’s new Youth League, along with his friends Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, whom he had known since students days. The three would play a key role in the history of the ANC, and of South Africa. Sisulu became ANC Secretary-General while Mandela and Tambo became members of the National Executive.
The two friends were making an impact in other ways. In 1952 they founded South Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela and Tambo. The operated from Chancellor House, right in the heart of downtown Johannesburg, near the court buildings. In the Fifties this area was a centre of black resistance. The ANC had their offices in the same building, and Mandela and Tambo became attorneys for them and other black clients. Mandela, always a stylish, well-dressed figure, became famous for his passionate courtroom speeches, standing up for African rights as the situation in the country grew rapidly worse.
The story continues...
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