Nelson Mandela was a former South African president and anti-apartheid revolutionary who spent 27 years in prison for his activism against racial segregation and white minority rule. As the leader of the African National Congress party and its armed wing, he was a prominent figure in the anti-apartheid movement and was instrumental in dismantling the apartheid regime and implementing multiracial elections. After his release from prison in 1990, Mandela negotiated an end to apartheid and in 1994 became South Africa's first black president in the country's first multi-racial elections.