Market trader Dorothy Williams, 62, remembers it well. She first saw Nelson Mandela in the flesh 20 years ago in the square where she now has a herbal remedies stall. “I was standing on a rubbish bin to get a glimpse of him. After 27 years, we finally had new hope for the future.”

 

On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison with his then wife Winnie. He gave his first speech from the balcony of Cape Town City Hall, thanking the 5000-strong crowd for their support.

 

Craig Hepburn, 47, was also there that day, although he was not close enough to hear Mr Mandela’s speech properly. It didn’t bother him though. All he wanted was to see the man with his own eyes. As a white man, he experienced that day differently from Dorothy Williams, who is black. He recalls the tension in the air, a result of the intense anger caused by apartheid. He had mixed feelings about the occasion, fearing that Mandela’s release might spark a civil war. But Mr Mandela’s call to rebuild the country together offered reassurance.

During his years in captivity, Nelson Mandela was possibly the world’s most famous prisoner. On 12 June 1964, he was convicted on charges including sabotage and plotting a violent revolution. He served most of his sentence in the prison on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town.

 

On 2 February 1990, in a historic speech to parliament, President F W de Klerk lifted the ban on the African National Congress (ANC) and other “revolutionary movements” and announced the release of all political prisoners, among them Nelson Mandela.
 

Mr De Klerk realised he had no choice. South Africa had been economically and politically isolated by sanctions and, with the Cold War at an end, the ruling National Party was no longer receiving outside support in its battle against the “communists” of the ANC. He also believed that the ANC had been weakened since the support it received from the Soviet Union had dried up.
 

Nine days after President de Klerk’s speech, Nelson Mandela was a free man. On that summer’s day, Dorothy Williams and Craig Hepburn had to wait a long time for him to arrive at Cape Town City Hall. A number of Mr Mandela’s supporters looted shops and clashed with police. But in the early evening, all eyes were fixed on the balcony as Mr Mandela appeared. He had to borrow his wife Winnie’s glasses in order to read his speech, having absent-mindedly left his own behind in prison.
 

“Today the majority of South Africans, black and white, recognise that apartheid has no future,” Mr Mandela said, “Our march to freedom is irreversible”. For market trader Dorothy Williams, these words summed up the change that had taken place: at last she was free and could come and go as she pleased. When Mr Mandela let out his famous battle cry “Amandla”, she wept.
 

Yet, even after that defining moment, democracy was a long time coming. Dorothy Williams maintains that even now, twenty years on, things are far from perfect in South Africa. She sometimes wonders if today’s leaders have forgotten that it was the workers who fought the battle for them. She does not earn much and the country is facing high rates of crime and crippling poverty.
 

After a lengthy transitional period of negotiations between the ANC and the apartheid regime and the drafting of a new constitution, Nelson Mandela was elected president in the country’s first truly democratic elections, four years after his release. Shortly before, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with F W de Klerk.
 

Dan Plato, now mayor of Cape Town, gazes out of his office window, directly across from the old city hall where Mr Mandela gave his speech. The crowd was so vast, he was unable to reach the square. Back then, as a political activist, he could never have imagined standing in that very same square one day as mayor of the city.

 

Nelson Mandela’s release heralded a whole new future for a young black man like Dan Plato. The things that stick in his mind about that historic speech are the words of reconciliation and the pledge to work together for a better future. As the mayor of a city full of challenges, they remain an inspiration to this day. 

Photo: Craig Hepburn heard Mandela’s call to rebuild South Africa