Release of Nelson Mandela (1990): Apartheid Begins to End

The release of Nelson Mandela on 11 February 1990 ended 27 years of imprisonment for the world’s most famous political prisoner and signalled the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa. Walking hand in hand with his wife Winnie out of Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, Mandela became the symbol of a peaceful transition that would lead, four years later, to South Africa’s first democratic election.

Background: apartheid and Mandela’s imprisonment

Apartheid (“separateness” in Afrikaans) was the system of racial segregation and white minority rule introduced by the National Party after 1948. Black South Africans were denied the vote, forced into separate areas and subjected to pass laws controlling their movement. After police killed 69 protesters at Sharpeville in 1960, the government banned the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress.

Mandela, a lawyer and ANC leader, helped found the armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”) in 1961. He was arrested on 5 August 1962 and, at the Rivonia Trial, sentenced on 12 June 1964 to life imprisonment with seven co-accused, including Walter Sisulu. He spent 18 years on Robben Island, breaking rocks in a lime quarry, before being moved to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town in 1982.

Conditions on Robben Island were deliberately harsh, especially in the early years. Black prisoners were given shorts rather than long trousers and less food than other inmates, letters and visits were strictly limited, and Mandela was not allowed to attend the funerals of his mother in 1968 or his eldest son in 1969. The political prisoners organised themselves, however, and turned the island into a place of study and debate, sometimes called “the university”. Mandela studied law by correspondence and became the acknowledged leader of the prisoners in their dealings with the authorities.

Why the government changed course

By the mid-1980s South Africa was in crisis. Townships rose in revolt from 1984, states of emergency were declared, and thousands were detained. Abroad, the “Free Mandela” campaign grew into a mass movement, symbolised by the Wembley concert for his 70th birthday in 1988. The United States Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over President Reagan’s veto in 1986, banks withdrew loans and the economy stagnated.

In January 1985 President P. W. Botha offered Mandela freedom if he renounced violence. Mandela refused, saying in a statement read by his daughter Zindzi at Jabulani Stadium in Soweto that only free men can negotiate. Yet from the mid-1980s he began secret talks with Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee and later a team of officials. In August 1988 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and treated in hospital. That December, on his recovery, he was moved to a warder’s cottage within the grounds of Victor Verster Prison, near Paarl, where he had a cook, a swimming pool and space to receive visitors and hold confidential discussions. On 5 July 1989 he met Botha himself.

The end of the Cold War removed one of the government’s main arguments, that the ANC was a front for Soviet communism. When Botha suffered a stroke and was replaced by F. W. de Klerk, who became president in September 1989, the way opened for bold change.

De Klerk’s reforms

In October 1989 de Klerk released Walter Sisulu and other long-serving Rivonia prisoners. He met Mandela on 13 December 1989, and the two men took each other’s measure. On 2 February 1990, opening Parliament in Cape Town, de Klerk astonished the country by announcing the unbanning of the ANC, the PAC and the South African Communist Party, the release of many political prisoners, the easing of emergency regulations and a moratorium on executions. He said Mandela would be freed unconditionally.

Mandela was told on 10 February that he would be released the next day. He asked for a week’s delay to allow preparations, but de Klerk insisted, and they agreed that he would walk out of Victor Verster rather than be flown to Johannesburg.

The walk to freedom

On the afternoon of Sunday 11 February 1990, about an hour later than scheduled, Mandela, then 71, walked out of the prison gate with Winnie Mandela at his side and raised a clenched fist. Television broadcast the moment live around the world. It was the first time in decades that the public had seen him: photographs of Mandela had been banned in South Africa while he was in prison.

His motorcade drove to Cape Town, where a huge crowd had waited for hours on the Grand Parade. That evening Mandela spoke from the balcony of the City Hall. Early in the speech he said, “I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people.” He thanked those who had campaigned for him, praised the ANC and said the armed struggle would continue until the conditions for negotiations were fully in place. On 13 February some 100,000 people welcomed him at a stadium in Soweto.

The day was not without trouble. The motorcade was delayed by crowds and took a roundabout route into the city, and on the Grand Parade, where people had waited since the morning, some looting broke out and police opened fire on looters, leaving casualties. When Mandela finally appeared it was already dusk, and he had to borrow Winnie’s spectacles because he had left his own behind. His speech, prepared with ANC colleagues, was deliberately cautious, reassuring his movement that he had not made a private deal with the government. The following day he gave his first press conference in the garden of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s residence, Bishopscourt, where he spoke more warmly of reconciliation and of white South Africans’ fears.

Reaction at home and abroad

The release was watched live by television audiences across the world, and celebrations broke out in townships throughout South Africa as well as among exiles and anti-apartheid campaigners abroad. Not everyone rejoiced: right-wing white groups denounced de Klerk as a traitor, while some within the liberation movements suspected a trap designed to divide them.

Within months Mandela was travelling the world as the ANC’s leading figure, although he formally became its president only in July 1991. He visited Zambia to meet the exiled ANC leadership, appeared at a second Wembley concert in his honour in April 1990, toured Europe and North America, and addressed a joint meeting of the US Congress in June 1990. Everywhere he urged governments to keep sanctions in place until apartheid had been fully dismantled, a position that caused friction with leaders such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who favoured lifting them as a reward for reform.

Key people

• Nelson Mandela – ANC leader, imprisoned 1962-1990, later South Africa’s first democratically elected president.
• F. W. de Klerk – President from 1989, who unbanned the liberation movements and ordered the release.
• Winnie Madikizela-Mandela – Mandela’s wife and an anti-apartheid activist in her own right.
• Walter Sisulu – Mandela’s mentor and fellow Rivonia prisoner, freed in October 1989.
• P. W. Botha – President until 1989, who made the conditional offer of 1985 and met Mandela secretly.

Negotiations and the road to democracy

The release opened a difficult period of talks amid serious violence. The Groote Schuur Minute of May 1990 and the Pretoria Minute of August 1990, in which the ANC suspended its armed struggle, set the terms for negotiation. Multi-party talks known as CODESA began in December 1991. In a referendum of white voters in March 1992, almost 69% backed continued reform.

Thousands died in political violence in these years, much of it between ANC supporters and the Inkatha Freedom Party, sometimes fuelled by security-force elements. The assassination of ANC leader Chris Hani in April 1993 brought the country close to the brink, but negotiators agreed an interim constitution later that year. Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and in April 1994 the first democratic election made Mandela president.

Myths and facts

Myth: Mandela was freed purely because of international pressure. Sanctions and campaigns mattered, but domestic resistance, economic decline, the end of the Cold War and years of secret talks were equally important.

Myth: Mandela always opposed armed struggle. He co-founded the ANC’s armed wing in 1961 and refused to renounce violence as a condition of release. He saw negotiation as the goal but kept armed struggle as an option until the Pretoria Minute of 1990.

Timeline

• 1962, 5 August: Mandela is arrested near Howick, Natal.
• 1964, 12 June: Sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial.
• 1982, March: Moved from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison.
• 1985, 10 February: His refusal of Botha’s conditional release offer is read out in Soweto.
• 1988, December: Transferred to Victor Verster Prison.
• 1989, 5 July: Secret meeting with President P. W. Botha.
• 1989, 15 October: Walter Sisulu and other prisoners are released.
• 1990, 2 February: De Klerk unbans the ANC and announces Mandela’s release.
• 1990, 11 February: Mandela walks free and speaks in Cape Town.
• 1990, 6 August: Pretoria Minute: the ANC suspends its armed struggle.

Why it matters

Mandela’s release turned a long confrontation into a negotiation. It made a peaceful end to apartheid possible and gave South Africa a leader whose commitment to reconciliation helped avert civil war. The image of him leaving Victor Verster remains one of the defining moments of the late twentieth century, alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall months earlier.