After 27 years in jail, Nelson Mandela was finally released from Victor Verster Prison near Cape Town in South Africa on this day 28 years ago. A great grandson of the King of the Thembu people, Mandela became the leader of the armed wing of the African National Congress, and he was arrested in 1962 and imprisoned. At his 1964 trial, he made the famous statement: “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.”
Mandela spent the next 18 years imprisoned on Robben Island, doing hard labour in a lime quarry. As a political prisoner, he was allowed one visitor and one letter every six months. In 1982 Mandela was transferred to Pollsmorr Prison, and throughout the 1980s the international “Free Nelson Mandela” campaign grew in intensity, until he was released in 1990, nine days after the ban on the African National Congress had been lifted.
After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for his efforts in negotiating a peaceful end to apartheid, Mandela was elected President of South Africa in 1994 at the age of 77, and he retired in 1999. He was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, and he is still respected as one of the world greatest leaders and peacemakers.