Emotions run high as SA marks Mandela’s release from jail

South Africans are marking the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison at the Robben Island.

Nelson Mandela, an African nationalist and anti-apartheid freedom fighter was South Africa’s president between the years 1994 and 1999.

Mandela, a lawyer by profession, started out as a young lawyer in Johannesburg where he became involved in the anti-colonization policies and freedom activists. He was later to shoot to national politics through ANC.

He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party SACP).

Mandela arrested

Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state.

Mandela served 27 years in prison, split between Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison, and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure, and with fears of a racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990.

Formed government

Mandela and de Klerk led efforts to negotiate an end to apartheid, which resulted in the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became president. Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country’s racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses.

Controversies

While Mandela is to date regarded as an African nationalist, he was not short of controversies.

He was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist and those on the far-left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid’s supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism.

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has led the nation to celebrate Mandela’s release from detention.

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