The young Mandela - in pictures

Archive photos of the young anti-apartheid activist, prior to his 27 years of incarceration.         

It's all too easy to remember Nelson Mandela as a peaceable, smiling, grey-haired elder statesman who successfully united a divided nation. However, prior to his 27 years in prison, Mandela was a young, charismatic lawyer who was prominent in some of the ANC's most radical acts of defiance, and even co-founded the group's militant wing in the early 1960s, despite being in favour of peaceful protest for most of his lifetime.
 

 
A teenage Nelson Mandela leans against a wall in 1937.
 

 
Mandela practices his boxing moves in the early 1950s. He had been a keen boxer since his school days.
 

 
ANC supporters give a thumbs up to prison vans containing some 152 anti-apartheid militants including Nelson Mandela, who went on trial for treason at Johannesburg's courthouse in 1956. The group were found not guilty.
 

 
Nelson Mandela and his co-accused sit for a group photo in their 1956 treason trial.
 

 
Mandela poses for a portrait in 1956.
 

 
Nelson Mandela and his bride Winnie Madikizela pose at their wedding in 1958.
 

 
Mandela is pictured with his wife Winnie shortly after they were married in the late 1950s
 

 
Nelson Mandela and friends sing 'Nikosi Sikelel I Afrika' at the end of their treason trial, in which they were found not guilty.
 

 
Nelson Mandela burns his passport - a document black South Africans were legally required to carry at the time in order to identify them - in the early 1960s as part of a public act of defiance against apartheid.
 

 
Nelson Mandela visits Westminster Abbey during his first trip to Britain in 1962. He had been in the middle of an extensive tour of Africa, and went to the UK to speak to journalists and prominent leftist and anti-apartheid activists.



Mandela (far left), meets commanders of the Algerian army as part of his African tour in 1962.



Mandela talks with close friend and fellow prominent anti-apartheid leader Oliver Tambo as they visit the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in 1962.



Mandela, then president of the African National Congress, engages in discussion with teacher C. Andrews in Cape Town.