Mandela's release: The day the myth was made flesh (Feature)

By Clare Byrne Feb 8, 2010, 5:04 GMT

Johannesburg - The image of former South African president Nelson Mandela walking out of prison after 27 years on February 11, 1990, is one of the defining moments of our time.

Apart from symbolizing the triumph of the human spirit over tyranny, and the enduring nature of the elemental desire for freedom, Mandela's release also marked, as his biographer Anthony Sampson noted, 'the return of the lost leader.'

As the face of the African National Congress (ANC), the outlawed party of liberation from the apartheid system of white supremacist rule, Mandela's image had been banned from publication by the apartheid authorities for three decades.

Outside the country, the bearded features of the activist as a young man were emblazoned on Free Mandela campaign posters and t-shirts.

Within South Africa, however, a whole generation had no mental image of the lawyer who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.

'Growing up as a young South African we never saw photos of him. Absolutely nothing,' says renowned singer Johnny Clegg, who gave voice to that void in 1986 in a Zulu song entitled Asibonanga (We have not seen him).

Writing the song, which became an anthem of the struggle, Clegg, 56, says he never dreamed he'd see the day Mandela would walk free.

'We thought he would either die in prison or, there was always fantasy political talk about launching an attack on Robben Island and setting him free,' Clegg told the German Press Agency dpa. Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison on the island off the coast of Cape Town.

The aura of authority that Mandela exuded as he took his first steps as a free man was what struck Clegg most.

'He had an absolute quiet confidence, a certainty, a gravitas in his walk. You could see he was already someone who had incredible mental power.'

Jonathan Janssen, the first black rector of the University of the Free State, formerly a white bastion, remembers the excitement of hearing Mandela speak publicly for the first time at a hastily-organized, monster rally in Cape Town the same day.

'To hear his voice was just unbelievable,' he told dpa. 'There was no water in the crowd, it was a hot day and people were being crushed but we almost didn't care,' he says, chuckling at the memory.

Addressing the crowd of around 60,000 supporters from the steps of City Hall, Mandela stressed his loyalty to the ANC and commitment to the armed struggle for democracy.

Rhetorically speaking, it was not his finest hour, Sampson recalls in his 1999 biography of the statesman, entitled Mandela.

'This too was an anti-climax (the first being scenes of anarchy and looting at the rally),' according to Sampson.

In his autobiography, Mandela tells of his amusement at receiving a letter the next day from a white Cape Town housewife, who told him: 'I am glad that you are free and that you are back among your friends and family but your speech yesterday was very boring.'

Mandela, it became clear, had yet to master the art of the soundbite.

While he was discovering the world at 71, the world was also discovering a man transformed.

Prison had mellowed the guerrilla leader, who bent over backwards during the months and years that followed to convince white South Africans there would be no violent retribution for apartheid.

When it came to his family, however, Mandela, was less flexible. A grandfather by now, he was anxious to make up for lost time and reclaim his role as family head, as his grandson, Mandla Zwelivelile Mandela, recalls.

Mandla, now a member of parliament and traditional leader in Mandela's home village of Mvezo in the Eastern Cape, relates how he bunked off school in Swaziland and hitchhiked back to South Africa immediately after Mandela's release.

'Getting home on that Sunday, my grandfather was excited and we were all happy to be home, you know.'

'Well, it would only be three days later, on Wednesday morning, that he (Mandela) said: 'Aren't you supposed to be at school?'

'And I'm like, 'No, but I'm home now. You came back home!'

'No, no, you must go back to school at once,' Mandela ordered.