Nelson Mandela Released
Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison
February 11, 1990
Twenty-Seven Years Behind Bars
On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison near Cape Town, South Africa, a free man after 27 years of imprisonment. The moment was broadcast live around the world. Mandela raised his right fist in a gesture that became one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. He had been imprisoned since 1964, when he was convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government at the Rivonia Trial. He had served most of his sentence on Robben Island, a maximum-security prison off the Cape coast, where political prisoners were subjected to hard labor in a limestone quarry. He had refused conditional release offers that would have required him to renounce the armed struggle.
The System Mandela Fought
Apartheid was the system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination that the white minority government of South Africa had imposed since 1948. Black South Africans were denied the right to vote, forced to live in designated townships and homelands, barred from most skilled jobs, and subjected to pass laws that controlled their movement. Mandela had joined the African National Congress Youth League in 1944 and became one of its most prominent leaders. After the apartheid government banned the ANC in 1960, Mandela helped form its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, which carried out acts of sabotage against government infrastructure. It was this activity that led to his imprisonment.
From Prison to Presidency
South African President F.W. de Klerk announced Mandela's release and began dismantling apartheid in a landmark speech to Parliament on February 2, 1990. Mandela and de Klerk led negotiations that resulted in South Africa's first fully democratic elections in April 1994. Mandela won the presidency in a landslide, becoming South Africa's first Black head of state. He served one term, stepping down in 1999. His Truth and Reconciliation Commission attempted to heal the wounds of apartheid through testimony and amnesty rather than punishment. Nelson Mandela died on December 5, 2013, at the age of 95, and is universally recognized as one of the great moral and political figures of the 20th century.