Nelson Mandela was born in the Transkei, South Africa on 18 July 1918. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated and his reputation as a potent symbol of resistance to the anti-apartheid movement grew steadily. Released from prison ... Read morein 1990, Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and was inaugurated as the first democratically-elected president of South Africa in 1994. He is the author of the international bestseller Long Walk to Freedom. He died on 5 December 2013, aged ninety-five. Graca Machel was born in Mozambique in 1945. She has been teacher, human rights activist, international advocate for women's and children's rights and a politician. In July 1998 she married Nelson Mandela. Among numerous awards she has received the United Nations' Nansen Medal in recognition of her long-standing humanitarian work, particularly on behalf of refugee children. Mandla Langa was born in 1950 in Durban, South Africa. After being arrested in 1976, he went into exile and has lived in Botswana, Hungary, Zambia and the UK, where he was the ANC's Cultural Representative. As a writer and journalist, he was the first South African to be awarded the Arts Council of Great Britain bursary for creative writing and has been a columnist for the Sunday Independent and the New Nation and an award-winning author of many novels. Show Less