30 years ago, Nelson Mandela was released from prison…

Text by: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

On February 11, 1990, after 27 years and 190 days in prison, South African Nelson Mandela, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment at the height of the period of racial segregation, was released. Back in five questions on the circumstances and the consequences of this liberation whose images had gone around the world at the time. Interview with Jean Guiloineau, biographer (1) of the black historic leader and future president of democratic and multiracial South Africa.

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RFI: The South Africans are celebrating this February 11th the 30th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela. Could you remind us of the circumstances that made this release possible?

Jean Guiloineau: The main event whose release from prison by Nelson Mandela was only one of the consequences was the arrival of Gorbachev to power in Moscow. The reforms undertaken by the latter led to the fall of the communist regimes in Europe. It was the end of the Cold War and the end of international policy based on the rivalries between the two superpowers that were then the United States and the Soviet Union. South Africa was one of Washington's main allies on the African continent during the Cold War. However in the 1980s, with the signs of exhaustion of communism, this alliance had become cumbersome for the United States, especially since the black majority, victim of terrible police violence, was close to the explosion. Under pressure from Washington, Pretoria had no choice but to negotiate with the African National Congress (ANC) and in particular with its leader Nelson Mandela, who had established himself as the essential leader of the black majority of the country. Negotiations began in 1987 under President Pieter Botha and were concluded by Frederik de Klerk who announced to Parliament on February 1, 1990 the decision of his government to release Mandela. Apartheid will be officially abolished in June 1991. In my opinion, nothing symbolizes the change in political paradigm at the time than the incident which took place at the start of the negotiations. Mandela, who is still in prison, was invited to take the presidential tea by the presidential couple. At the entrance to the living room where Pieter Botha and his wife are waiting for their guest, the Minister of Justice, who is sort of the chief jailer of Mandela and who accompanies him, suddenly realizes that the laces of the Mandela's shoes were undone. What is he doing ? The minister kneels to make the laces of the most famous prisoner in the world under his charge. Quite a symbol!

A huge crowd awaited Mandela on February 11, 1990, when he left prison hand in hand with his wife Winnie. How is this popularity explained when, apart from a few relatives who had the right to visit him in prison and his fellow inmates, no one had seen him since 1964?

Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie (left), during a concert at Wembley, April 16, 1990. Georges De Keerle / Getty Images

Indeed, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, Mandela will remain incarcerated for 27 years, first on Robben Island until 1982, before being transferred to Pollsmoor and finally to Victor Verster prison, located in the town of Paarle, about sixty kilometers north of Cape Town. During these long three decades, his friends and his wife Winnie Mandela did everything to keep his memory alive. In the 1980s, I remember seeing posters with his effigy adorning the walls of slums. Winnie Mandela met with foreign leaders visiting South Africa to tell them about the cause of the blacks that her husband was defending. And then there was in July 1988, at Wembley stadium in London, on the occasion of Mandela's seventieth birthday, this monster rock concert in the presence of Harry Bellafonte, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder. This concert, which was attended by 72,000 spectators and 200 million viewers, made Mandela the icon of imprisoned freedom that he had become and with which black South Africans could identify. It was in these years that the Mandela myth was born.

Everyone keeps in mind the image of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, coming out of prison, hand in hand and fists raised. The men and women gathered in front of the prison door on February 11, 1990 see them go out, but do they know where they are going ?

They cross the door of the Victor Verster prison around 3 p.m. They get into the car that will take them to Cape Town. When they reach their destination, they walk across the vast square in front of the town hall where an immense crowd has gathered. It is from the balcony of the Town Hall that Mandela will deliver his first speech as a free man. To resume the thread of conversation with his people, he will say at the outset that he has always fought against white domination as well as black domination, and recalled that he had devoted his life to " the ideal of a democratic society and free in which all would live together, in harmony, with equal opportunities ”. This was exactly what he had said in court, twenty-seven years earlier, when he concluded his oral argument at the Rivonia trial, before being sentenced to life in prison for " high treason and attempted forcible ouster". government ”. In Cape Town, he is whistled by the young blacks who have come to listen to him, because they were waiting for a war speech. He gave them a speech of peace. This is what had also been negotiated with the authorities. Mandela played the game. Not only because he had given his word, but above all because he was aware that if they called on the youth to take up arms, as he could very well have done, he would have toppled his country in the civil war. It was not what he wanted for his people or for the country in general.

His heirs wonder today if he was not mistaken on February 11 by not calling on young people to continue the revolution…

Mandela was not a Gandhi pacifist. He had defended the armed struggle. It was he who created in June 1961 the Umkhonto we Sizwe , the armed branch of the ANC, but he never forgot that the balance of power was unfavorable to the blacks. This is the lesson he learned from his meeting in 1962 with the leaders of the Algerian liberation movement, during his clandestine tour in ten African countries. Houari Boumedien and Ahmed Ben Bella, whom he met when the Evian Accords were being signed, explained to him a fundamental thing: faced with the military might of the colonizers, no prospect of military victory for the colonized was possible. And besides the Algerians had not won a military victory, but a political victory, told his interlocutors. He was also told that to create the conditions for a political victory, it was necessary to start an armed struggle. Mandela will remember it all her life.

This release from prison will not be particularly gay for Mandela on a personal level. His relationships are difficult with Winnie and they will lead to divorce ...

Winnie and Nelson, their wedding day, June 1958. Copyright © Eli Weinberg, University of Western Cape - Robben Island. Museum Mayibuye Archives.

When Mandela is released from prison, he is an old man. He had met Winnie in 1958. They married, and had 2 children together. By the late 1950s, Nelson Mandela had already gone into hiding. He visited his family from time to time. And then there was the Rivonia trial . Twenty-seven years of separation. When Nelson and Winnie reunite in 1990 and can live again as a normal couple, it is too late. Life was gone. Staying with the children, Winnie Mandela had to face insurmountable problems alone in order to be able to provide for her family and ensure her safety. Married to the most hated man in the Afrikaner establishment , she was constantly persecuted by the police and her agents. They punctured his car tires, threw bricks out of the window of his house in Soweto…

But Mandela never let her down. His Letters from prison (2) which I recently translated bear witness to this. He wrote regularly to the authorities asking them to let his wife and children live a normal life. Winnie, for her part, was an exemplary spokesperson for her husband, tirelessly fighting for the cause. She was accused of having led a dissolved personal life. When Nelson Mandela leaves prison, they don't really know each other anymore. During the divorce trial, he accused her of never coming to the bedroom when he was awake. I believe the drop of water that broke the mud, it was when, during a trip to Sweden to be at the bedside of his old friend Olivier Tambo, he called Winnie who was then in the United States in the luxurious owned by Diana Ross, her lover answered the phone. They separated in 1996, after thirty-eight years of marriage. It should also be remembered that during the entire period of negotiations with the government, Winnie's escapades were used against her husband by the authorities. There were as many personal reasons as there were political reasons for their divorce.

Nelson Mandela , by Jean Guiloineau. Preface by Breyten Breytenbach. Editions Plon, Paris, 1993 (available in pocket).

Nelson Mandela's prison letters . Translated from the English by Jean Guiloineau. Ed. Robert Laffont, Paris, 2018 (available in pocket).

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