Ten things you didn’t know about Nelson Mandela

1. He went by many names…

Mandela’s real name was Rolihlahla, which roughly translates as “troublemaker”. He was named by his father after his birth on July 18, 1918.

He was given the name Nelson at the age of seven by a teacher on his first day at primary school in Qunu, the Eastern Cape village where he grew up.

Mandela acquired a new name, Dalibunga, at the age of 16 after undergoing a tribal initiation ceremony which included circumcision (performed with an assegai spear and no anaesthetic).

Many South Africans know him as Madiba, a name which can be used by all members of his Thembu clan. The use of the tribal name, which comes from an ancestral chief, is a sign of respect and affection.

2. …and there are many things that bear his name

Scientists have honoured Mandela by naming numerous discoveries in his honour.

The list includes a species of spider, a new species of a bug called the springtail, a fossilised woodpecker and an orchid.

In 1999 naturalists granted Mandela a rare honour when they named a whole new genus and family of animal, the sea slug Mandelia microcornata, after him.

Perhaps the most unusual discovery to bear his name is the Mandela Particle, a sub-atomic particle “discovered” by scientists at Leeds University in 1973.

The supposed breakthrough was later found to be a mistake caused by a computer fault.

3. He had blue blood

Mandela’s father Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a local chief and his paternal great grandfather was king of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe.

The young Mandela would not have inherited the throne but was expected to become a councillor in the Thembu royal household.

His background was one of relative status and privilege and when he was first sent to Clarkebury, the best boarding school in the Thembuland region, he confessed to having a “stuck up” attitude to the other pupils.

4. He was a keen boxer

Mandela trained seriously as an amateur heavyweight and sparred with professional fighters including Jerry Moloi, a contender for South African lightweight champion.

Mandela later wrote in praise of the “noble art”, saying: “Boxing is egalitarian. In the ring, rank, age, color, and wealth are irrelevant.

“I never did any real fighting after I entered politics. My main interest was in training; I found the rigorous exercise to be an excellent outlet for tension and stress.”

Vigorous early-morning fitness training sessions would remain part of his daily routine for much of his adult life.

As well as boxing, Mandela excelled at long-distance running as a young man, and he took up ballroom dancing while studying at Fort Hare university.

5. He had several careers – not all of them real

Despite his aristocratic background, Mandela’s first gainful employment was as a nightwatchman at a gold mine near Johannesburg in 1941.

He had run away to the big city after getting expelled from Fort Hare for helping to organise a student strike, and being threatened by his family with the prospect of an arranged marriage.

Mandela later worked as an articled legal clerk before founding South Africa’s first black law firm with his friend Oliver Tambo in 1952.

The white minority regime banned the African National Congress (ANC) in 1960 and Mandela, a key member, was forced to go on the run, hiding in safe houses owned by sympathisers.

While living underground he was obliged to adopt a number of disguises and was dubbed “the Black Pimpernel” by the South African press due to his skill in evading the security forces.

He dressed as a field worker, a chef and a chauffeur to move around without arousing suspicion. He once found himself pulled up at traffic lights next to a local Security Branch colonel while wearing a workman’s cap and blue overalls.

Mandela wrote: “He never looked my way, but even so the seconds I spent waiting for the light to change seemed like hours.”

6. He trained as a guerrilla

By now a leading international dissident, Mandela had become convinced that the use of violence was justified in the battle to bring down apartheid.

He received military training in Ethiopia in 1962, learning how to use automatic rifles, pistols, mortars, bombs and mines. He also travelled to Algeria in 1962 (pictured above) to receive guerrilla training in the last days of the country’s war against its former colonial ruler France.

But Mandela never fired a shot in anger during the armed struggle in South Africa. He was arrested shortly after returning to the country in August 1962.

7. He remained on the US terrorist watch list until 2008

Ronald Reagan had placed the ANC on the list in the 1980s, when the organisation was firmly committed to armed resistance to apartheid.

It was not until 2008, after Mandela had served as South Africa’s first democratically-elected president and won the Nobel Peace Prize, that George Bush removed ANC members from automatic inclusion on the ANC’s watch list.

The then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice called it an “embarrassing” oversight – but America was not the only country to brand Mr Mandela a terrorist.

Margaret Thatcher called the ANC a “typical terrorist organisation” and refused to support sanctions against apartheid South Africa.

8. He studied Afrikaans

Fellow inmates on Robben Island, the prison where Mandela spent 18 of the 27 years he served behind bars, said Mandela made a serious study of the language of South Africa’s Dutch settlers and practised speaking Afrikaans with white prison guards.

Some expressed surprise that Mandela should want to master a language widely associated with the white nationalists who had created the apartheid system, but according to fellow prisoners the future president “wanted to really get to know Afrikaners, as part of the people who belonged to the country”.

9. He never said: “It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

The full quotation, by the American spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson, is often said to have formed part of Mandela’s inaugural address as South African president. Internet searches results attributing the words to Mandela run into the millions.

But there is no record of him ever uttering these words.

Other famous Mandela quotations are beyond doubt. There are even scratchy audio recordings of the famous opening speech he made from the dock while on trial for sabotage in 1964.

Mandela told the court: “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.

“I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

10. He might have driven past you (and you wouldn’t know).

Jack Swart, Mandela’s chef during his last days of house arrest, talks about Mandela secretly driving around Cape Town in a car with tinted windows.

Mandela kept the habit after he was released, satisfying his curiosity on foreign visits by driving around anonymously.

The poet Benjamin Zephaniah recalls accompanying Mandela on car trips around London, where the great world leader would get a flavour of everyday life in the capital by peering out at unsuspecting passers-by through tinted windows.