Twenty years ago last Thursday, Nelson Mandela woke up at 4.30am in his cell in Victor Verster Prison. He had been arrested in August 1962 and sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1964. He had then spent 18 years doing hard labour on Robben Island, and in all he had now been in prison for more than 27 years. But 11 February 1990 was to be his last day in prison; a new set of challenges awaited him on the outside.
In the afternoon of that day, Nelson Mandela, wearing a grey suit, walked out of the jail to be met by his wife and a large crowd of African National Congress members and supporters. In his freedom speech, he repeated what he had said at his trial in 1964: “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.”
In the ensuing years, Mandela worked tirelessly for a peaceful transition of South Africa from apartheid to multi-racial democracy. In 1993 he was joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1994 he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president after his ANC party won 62% of the votes in the country’s first multi-racial elections. During his five years of presidency he oversaw the peaceful dismantling of apartheid.