Nelson Mandela and Apartheid

Apartheid was a policy of segregation enforced in South Africa for the people who were not white. It was enforced by the National Party government between 1948-1994. Nelson Mandela was the leader of movement against apartheid. He was convicted of several charges including sabotage. He was put in jail for 27 years, and was released February 11, 1990. He immediately started acting again to get the colored people equal rights. In 1994 he was elected president of South Africa in the first truly democratic election. Mandela received over 250 awards including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for his contribution to world freedom. He will always be one of the greatest heros of civil rights movements. 

African Independence

After World War II the British colonies in Africa said no more to being controlled by the British. They started by collecting money and sending their sharpest people to Europe to learn how to run a country and also to get to know their culture and be more "up to date". Also those people pleaded the British constantly for more rights for Africans so they can improve their lives and reach the goal which was independence. Something like that has been done in Kenya, its people sent Jomo Kenyatta to Europe for that purpose. But some Africans thought if they acted with violence they would scare the British off and be independent that way. The people that believed in those way were called the Mau Mau in Kenya.  

Even though many African countries got their independence back they did not know how to RUN a country much less how to make the population function like those in Europe. Most of the Africa's countries are maybe 50 to about 70 years old, they're still developing their government and because of that those countries are very poor. Poverty, war, and famine exist in most of those countries. 

NATO and The Warsaw Pact

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was formed by the countries that opposed communism and were on the west side of the iron curtain from West Berlin and any country west of that in Europe, also U.S. and Canada. It was an alliance of those countries to help each other in case of a military conflict. Same exact thing for the Warsaw Pact it was just an alliance of communist countries under the influence  of the Soviet Union. Two groups of countries working against each other just because they believe in a different political systems.