Feb. 2 (GIN) – Twenty years ago today, former president FW de Klerk called an end to the racist system of apartheid. Not long after, he ordered the release from prison of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela.
De Klerk was “one of the braver apartheid rulers,” observed former ANC secretary general Cyril Ramaphosa in an interview with SABC radio.
“Of all the apartheid rulers he was the braver one, who took the steps," Ramaphosa said, but added, “He had to do it….His hand had been forced by pressure inside and outside the country for reforms.”
Mandela was released from Victor Verster prison near Cape Town nine days later to scenes of wild rejoicing and led the ANC in three years of multi-party negotiations on the transition to democracy.
“By 3:30, I began to get restless,” recalled Mandela in his book Long Walk to Freedom, “as we were already behind schedule. I told the members of the Reception Committee that my people had been waiting for me for twenty-seven years and I did not want to keep them waiting any longer...
“When I was among the crowd I raised my right fist, and there was a roar. I had not been able to do that for twenty-seven years and it gave me a surge of strength and joy. As I finally walked through those gates to enter a car on the other side, I felt - even at the age of seventy-one - that my life was beginning anew.
“My ten thousand days of imprisonment were at last over." Many years later, when the book Long Walk to Freedom appeared, Mandela was asked about a movie version and he suggested that he be played by actor Morgan Freeman. That movie, Invictus, is now showing at cinemas worldwide.
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