Short History Of... - Nelson Mandela

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Nelson Mandela came to be considered one of the great global figures of his age, but for decades he was a prisoner in his own country. Branded a terrorist by South Africa’s white authorities, as well as many foreign governments, he survived years in the wilderness, only to return in one of the most dramatic character rehabilitations in history. So what drove this son of a high-ranking family to become an activist against South Africa’s apartheid regime? What strategies did he adopt, and at what personal cost? And what were the circumstances that brought about his release? This is a Short History of Nelson Mandela. A Noiser Production. Written by Dan Smith. With thanks to Jonny Steinberg, award-winning author of numerous books on South African history and politics, including Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage.  Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starring Kaylee Cuoco and Chris Messina. The only investigating I'm doing these days is who shit their pants. Killer messaged you yesterday? This is so dangerous. I gotta get out of this. Based on a true story. New season Mondays at 9 Eastern and Pacific. Only on W. Stream on StackTV. It's mid-afternoon on the 24th of June 1995 in Johannesburg's Ellis Park Stadium.

on the 24th of June 1995 in Johannesburg's Ellis Park Stadium. A crowd of 60,000 nervously hollers and whistles as the Rugby Union World Cup final approaches its climax. The home side, South Africa, known as the Springboks after the gazelle-like animals that roam the country, narrowly lead 15-12 against New Zealand, perennial giants of the game. Then, a final set piece near the New Zealand line. A player fumbles the ball. The referee puts his whistle to his lips and blows full time.

The home crowd erupts in jubilant cheering, the tension dissolving. New Zealand's players stand dejectedly as their opponents leap for joy, then huddle into a tight circle. A moment to recognize their collective achievement. They are champions of the world. This is the third Rugby World Cup, an event held every four years. But it is the first in which South Africa has appeared. Until recently, the nation's sporting teams were banned from international competition,

a sanction imposed because of the government's apartheid regime, a system of racial discrimination. But this is a new South Africa. Now an elderly man starts to cross the pitch towards a podium hastily constructed at its center. He wears the green and gold jersey of the spring box and a baseball cap in the same colors perched on his head covering his salt and pepper hair. The crowd, as one, acknowledges him. A chant of, Nelson, Nelson, goes up. He raises his hand, accepting the adulation.

His name is Nelson Mandela, and he is the nation's first black president. Though he spent most of his life under the yoke of apartheid, for the last five years he has steered his country through the perilous waters from oppressive white minority rule to multiracial democracy. Where once the Springboks were a symbol of white rule, loathed by the black population, Mandela has seen to it that today they represent his entire rainbow nation. As the slogan goes, one team, one country. At the podium Mandela awaits the arrival of the Springboks' burly, blonde-haired, white captain Francois Pina.

The President passes him the glistening gold William Webb Ellis Cup, enthusiastically shaking his hand. Then, as Pina raises the cup, and the crowd lets out another almighty cheer, Mandela punches the air, once, twice, and again and again. A cacophony of camera shutters accompanies the scene. No one in any doubt that this is history in the making. South Africa's re-emergence on the world scene,

piloted by maybe the most celebrated man on the planet. Nelson Mandela came to be considered one of the great global figures of his age, but for decades he was a prisoner in his own country. Reviled and branded a terrorist by South Africa's white authorities, not to mention many foreign governments. He survived long years in the wilderness, only to return in one of the most dramatic

character rehabilitations in history. So what drove this son of a high-ranking family to become an unflinching activist against South Africa's long-running apartheid regime? What strategies did he adopt in his fight for black majority rights, and at what personal cost? And what were the circumstances that brought about his release, his political rise, and his recasting as a figure of unity and hope.

I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Network, this is a short history of Nelson Mandela. It's sometime in the mid-1920s in South Africa. A young boy from a small village in the Transkei in the eastern part of the Cape province is having his first day at primary school. His name is Choli Shlashla, which roughly translates as Troublemaker. But his teacher tells her new pupils that though their primary language is Kosa, they must each be given a new English name. And this little boy she calls Nelson after the famous British Admiral.

The Mandela family descend from Tembu royalty. Nelson is the son of his father's third wife and will eventually be brother or half-brother to twelve siblings. His father is an advisor to the Tembu king, and little Nelson can expect to be the same someday. But South Africa's majority black population has for centuries been subjugated by an uneasy mix of Dutch and British settlers. Just eight years before Nelson's birth, the Union of South Africa was inaugurated,

a nation geared up to be ruled by whites in the interest of whites. Despite his aristocratic connections, Nelson lives a simple life, rooted in traditional rural ways. He sleeps on a mat in a mud hut with no electricity or running water. When not at school, he runs about with his contemporaries and tends cattle. He never wears shoes, and his introduction to Western dress comes only when he starts

school, and his father cuts off a pair of his own riding britches, which young Nelson wears tied at the waist with rope. But when he is twelve, his father dies. Nelson now becomes a ward of the Tembu regents' family in his royal court a few miles away. Removed from his birth family, he now lives in a western-style home and wears western-style clothing. He also gets a thorough introduction to the mechanisms of traditional government, a form of consensual democracy that influences him greatly.

His education continues, as does his connection to the Methodist Church. He is groomed, in his own words, to be a black Englishman. Johnny Steinberg teaches at Yale University's Council on African Studies and is an award-winning author of numerous books on South African history and politics, including Winnie and Nelson Portrait of a Marriage. He himself was completely unpoliticized as a child. The white people in his life were traders, they were officials who came to see the regent, and he regarded them as heroic figures, as gods.

You know, in 1913, an organization he would come to lead, then call the South African National Natives Congress, it would become the ANC, was formed in resistance to white rule. He knew nothing of it, at all. The world of white narrative rule was completely natural to him while he was growing up. He felt that was simply the way the world was. Segregation in South Africa is partly governed by law, restricting certain rights to vote, buy property, and hold particular jobs along racial lines. In the world of education,

black and white children simply do not mix, and white children enjoy far greater opportunities. But in the small town of Alice, Fort Hare is the first South African university to offer black students Western-style higher education. It's here that Mandela enrolls in 1939. education. It's here that Mandela enrolls in 1939. Straight away his social horizons expand as he studies with young people from an array of backgrounds and with wildly differing outlooks. He strikes up a particular friendship with a young man named Oliver Tambo in whom he finds a political soulmate. Mandela has been at Fort Hare barely a year when he leads protests about some of the ways in which the

university is run. For his efforts he is expelled. Back in his palace home plans are made for an arranged marriage to a girl he is barely met. But Mandela has no intention of becoming tied down and stealing some cattle to raise money for an escape. He flees in 1941 to Johannesburg. Life in the big city is at once a shock and an exhilarating new adventure. Soon he meets a rising local black businessman called Walter Sisula,

who also happens to be a prominent figure in the African National Congress, or ANC, a black liberation movement founded a few decades previously. Mandela sits in his office and explains his desire to become a lawyer. Something about the young man impresses Sisulu, who helps him find a clerking position at a law firm that undertakes pioneering work on behalf of black clients. Sisulu also encourages his new protégé to join the ANC, and Mandela resumes his studies on a law course at the city's Vitwatersrand University, where he is the only black student. It's important to understand that at that time there were only about 40 black lawyers in South Africa, so he was really following the trajectory of his education. His education told him that he

was the very, very elite of black people, that he was going to lead his people. But he's still constantly exposed to the indignities and hurdles that whites simply do not encounter. So for instance, early on in his days at that firm, a white secretary was taking dictation from him when a client walked in. And she was so embarrassed to be taking dictation from a black man that she opened her purse and put money in Mandela's hands and said, go and buy shampoo for me outside. And he could experience those indignities every day living in the city. That's what made him angry.

Though his interest in political activism deepens, Mandela also enjoys the social side of life and has a notoriously roving eye when it comes to women. In 1944, he is at Susulu's house when he is introduced to a young nurse called Evelyn. A whirlwind romance follows and within a few months they are married. In the meantime, with Susulu and his old friend Tambo, he sets up an ANC Youth League. It was an organization which pitted itself against the moderation of their elders. And one of the big questions of the day was whether black people should work with racial

minorities, whether they should work with white people and Indian people, and whether they should work with communists. And Mandela was absolutely vociferous and militant that black people should work alone. He is growing a reputation for his combativeness and powerful oration. He was big, he was six foot two and broad-shouldered, and used his physical power quite sagaciously. There were occasions where he literally threw communists and Indian speakers off the stage. With Questrade, you get the right tools, stock insights, and proper guidance, so you can become a better investor. It's time to get the financial future you deserve. Get yours. Questrade.

A woman struck dead after hearing a haunting whistle. A series of childlike drawings scrawled throughout a country estate. A prize horse wandering the moors without an owner. To the regular observer, these are merely strange anomalies. But for the master detective, Sherlock Holmes, they are the first pieces of an elaborate puzzle. I'm Hugh Bonneville. Join me every Thursday for Sherlock Holmes short Stories. I'll be reading a selection of the super sleuth's most baffling cases, all brought to life in their original masterful form.

The game is afoot, and you're invited to join the chase. From the Noiser Network, this is Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Search for Sherlock Holmes Short Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Or listen at Noiser.com. In 1948, Black South Africa reels when the right-wing National Party wins a general election. It formally introduces its apartheid policies, an Afrikaans word meaning separateness, which enshrines in law the economic and social inequalities that have long been prevalent. Every aspect of normal life is impacted.

Marriage between whites and any other race is outlawed, and the best jobs are reserved for whites only. Blacks are also faced with a far lower quality of education, health, and public service provision. The ANC Youth League responds with a campaign of passive resistance incorporating mass strikes and boycotts. In 1950, Mandela, by now a father, takes over the presidency of the League and also joins the ANC National Executive. But conditions under the National Party are only getting worse.

The government passes its Population Registration Act, which systematically classifies every individual into one of four racial categories. White, black, colored or mixed race, or Indian. Freedoms are granted accordingly. It is a piece of legislation loaded with value judgments. Not only is parentage considered, but also, in its own words, habits, education, speech, deportment, and demeanor. Black South Africans must now carry a sort of internal passport,

known as a passbook, which stipulates exactly where each individual is allowed to live, travel, and work. Failure to produce the document on demand can result in arrest and imprisonment. Mandela leads another mass defiance campaign based on Gandhi's principles of nonviolence. Protesters are encouraged, for example, to burn their passbooks and to enter whites-only areas. But the authorities clamped down heavily on the campaign, assaulting protesters and imposing harsh sentences, and it is quickly snuffed out.

The crashing of that campaign was one of the most important lessons in his life. It's when he first started thinking that it may be necessary to turn to violence. It's when he began to understand how hard peaceful mass protest was. In 1952, Mandela receives his first criminal conviction for his activism. Though he is forbidden from attending political meetings for six months, his stock within the ANC is rising, and he's voted its deputy president. He also opens his own legal practice in partnership with Oliver Tambor, the country's first black-owned

legal firm. To celebrate, Mandela buys himself an expensive car and high-end tailored suits. He really played the flamboyant man about town, and that's how he was known in the 1950s. And some people thought that it was flippant and unserious, but in retrospect, he was willing to understand the power of theatre. To be a black man wearing the most expensive threads in town and driving a fancy car was a political statement. His family is growing, but by now he is struggling to balance his public and private lives. He lived on nervous energy. His life as an activist was very, very dangerous. It was full of adrenaline. It was a high octane, 24-hour-a-day life, frankly. He was seldom at home. He was neglectful. He loved his children, but he was never there for them. He was notorious for his multiple

affairs. I mean, interestingly, most of the women he slept with were fellow activists. And so, polysex and his extramarital sex life were melded together in a very adrenaline-driven, exciting, dangerous life. His wife was deeply humiliated and it started eroding their marriage. In 1955, Mandela is key to putting together a Congress of the People, a multiracial alliance of activist groups. With the ANC at its center, the coalition unifies to create a Freedom Charter that asserts that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, regardless of race. A year later, when 38-year-old Mandela is driving past a bus stop,

he notices a young woman sitting there, early twenties and strikingly beautiful. And, miraculously, a few weeks later, she walks into his law firm on business with her brother. He discovers that she is a recently qualified social worker called Winnie. He may be older, but he is in fine physical shape from running and boxing. Though both are spoken for, the attraction is mutual and they begin to meet in secret. The seeds are sown for one of the most famous romances in South African history.

The relationship is only months old, when Mandela is among some 150 people, including most of the ANC's senior leadership, arrested and charged with high treason, for allegedly promoting communism, which is banned. After a stint in jail, he is given bail, but it is just the start of a drawn-out legal process. Yet the interruption does nothing to cool the flames of his love affair. By 1958, he had proposed to her and they had married. He had divorced his wife. And their

marriage was a spectacle. They looked very beautiful and very his wife. And their marriage was a spectacle. They looked very beautiful and very glamorous together. And they really intuited, they really understood the political power of that glamour. The following year, Winnie gives birth to a daughter, as what becomes known as the treason trial rumbles on. But within the ANC, the Pan-Africanist Congress, or PAC, splinter off, rejecting the ANC's multiracial approach in favor of a distinctly black African nationalism, promoting black progress and identity.

Within a few months, they launch their own campaign against the pass laws, encouraging protests in various townships. On the 21st of March 1960 in Sharpeville in the Transvaal Thousands gather outside the police station, awaiting a public response from a government official to their complaints about the pass laws. This is not an ANC backed event and Mandela is not among them. Though the atmosphere is largely convivial, early in the afternoon some 130 armed officers and four armored vehicles roll into the township. Now a flurry of jets flies low overhead in a bid to disperse the crowd.

When a few people on the ground lob stones, the police hit back with battens and tear gas, prompting a crowd surge. Then comes the police gunfire. Within moments it has turned into a massacre. Exact numbers of victims are disputed, but somewhere between 69 and 91 civilians are thought to die, with more than 200 injured. At that point, Mandela and a small group of people around him secretly take a decision that the time of peaceful protest is over, that it's not possible anymore, and that

it's necessary to turn to violence. Mandela has been mulling the possibility for years, but it's a big gamble. You know, in 1953, when Mandela first thought of violence, he sent his friend Walter Susulu to China to raise arms. And what the Chinese told Sasulu is, be very, very careful before you take on this regime with violence, because you will probably lose, they will probably crush you. And you will set back your struggle for freedom by 20, 30 or 40 years, because they will destroy you.

After Sharpeville, the government impose martial law and outlaws both the PAC and ANC. Many prominent activists, including Mandela, The government impose martial law and outlaws both the PAC and ANC. Many prominent activists including Mandela are arrested and held without charge for months. Then, in March 1961, after six years, the treason trial reaches its climax. Mandela and his co-defendants are acquitted for lack of evidence. It is a major embarrassment to the government, but Mandela is under no illusions that this means freedom. He goes underground, traveling the country under a host of disguises, including chauffeur,

chef and gardener, earning him the nickname of the Black Pimpinal. He takes command of Mkonto-Wisizwe, the ANC's newly established armed wing, known commonly as MK. Their plan is to focus on attacking symbolically important apartheid facilities while minimizing loss of life. In early 1962, with the MK's program of sabotage up and running, he secretly leaves the country

to tour Europe and Africa. Intent on gathering intelligence and fostering international support. But on his return to South Africa, he is arrested and convicted of leaving the country without permission and inciting workers' strikes. He gets five years in prison. Worse still, in July of 1963, the police raid the MK's secret headquarters. They find reams of incriminating paperwork about the organization, specifically naming Mandela. He is one of ten senior ANC figures, including Sisulu, who are subsequently charged with offenses related to the preparation of explosives, guerrilla warfare, and violent revolution.

Potentially capital crimes. Their trial gets underway in October 1963 and rolls on for months, but Mandela sees an opportunity. He prepares to give a speech from the dock, presenting the ANC's case for change in front of the watching world. On the 20th of April 1964, he rises to his feet to address the court. To begin with, he is a little hesitant, but he quickly finds his rhythm and holds forth for three compelling hours. His cherished ideal, he explains, is for a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. An ideal, he says, for which he is prepared to die.

But though his powerful eloquence makes international headlines, he is still found guilty and receives a sentence of life imprisonment. Within just three years of founding the MK, the ANC seems spent as a political force. After the turn to violence, the ANC was crashed. Its leadership went to jail or into exile and there was very, very little left and it took a long, long time to rebuild. You know, counterfactual history is impossible. We don't know what might have happened if Mandela had lost that decision to turn to rebuild. You know, counterfactual history is impossible. We don't know what might have happened if Mandela had lost that decision to turn to violence. But there's quite a strong

argument that it was a mistake. It is a question he has ample in late 1964 on Robben Island, in Table Bay, four miles off the coast northwest of Cape Town. The ocean crashes at the rugged shore, birds swooping and screeching in the skies above. The island has been used as a prison since the 17th century, and Alcatraz ahead of its time. It is edging towards lunchtime, but there is no let up for the prisoners down in the courtyard, forced to hammer away at stones hour after hour,

preparing them for use in road paving. Among the convicts is Nelson Mandela, his muscles burning, and his ears ringing with each new strike of hammer upon rock. Now in his 40s, he remains a strong, imposing figure. But even he is wearying. From his brow, he wipes the sweat that threatens to drip in his tired eyes. He has been awake since the morning call at 5.30.

His days here begin with cleaning his cell and washing out the bucket he's forced to use as a toilet, before a breakfast of watery porridge and a mug of the diluted baked maize masquerading as coffee. Then the inspection of cells and prison-issue jackets. Any alleged shortfall in standards earns a punishment, from loss of meals to solitary confinement. There is a sense of isolation even in the courtyard now, where conversation is forbidden. As Mandela pauses momentarily to ready himself for the next hammer swing, a warder yells at him to speed up.

Mercifully a bell starts to ring, a signal that it is midday and time for lunch. A metal drum of food is wheeled out, from which the prisoners serve themselves. Black inmates, like Mandela, are bottom of the pile, their meal consisting only of boiled corn. There is also an allowance of a powder made from corn and yeast, which can be mixed into an energizing drink. Only Mandela knows the portions are so small that he'll end up with little more than some off-color water. So instead he pockets the ration and saves it. By the weekend he might have enough

for one properly satisfying drink. Far too soon the warden chives him back to work. Another four hours of back-breaking labor lies ahead. And so it goes on, day after day, without even the prospect of a visit from his wife to break the monotony. The authorities allow her to come see him only once every six months. His mail, too, is ruthlessly censored. After work, only more hours in his cell lie ahead,

illuminated by a single, harsh light bulb that never turns off. Then tomorrow morning, it will all begin again. Conditions in prison at the beginning were truly horrible. He was such an exuberant man. He so lived in the present, he was so alive. Those years in prison would be cruel to anybody, but to a personality like his, they were really crushing.

In 1968, he's even refused permission to attend his mother's funeral, and again a year later, when his eldest son is killed in a motor accident. All the while, it seems as if he and the ANC are fading from view. There was a lot of press around their conviction in 1964, but if you trace Mandela and his comrades' appearance in international newspapers from the 60s into the 70s, they are disintegrating, they are disappearing. Mandela frets about the state of his marriage too, and the difficulties his young children face as they navigate life without their father. To keep his spirits up, he begins writing his autobiography and takes up gardening.

He also helps a warder with his English in return for lessons in Afrikaans, dreaming of a future when his side might sit down and talk to those who hold the reins of power. Beyond the prison walls, though, the National Party government is doubling down on marginalizing the black population, despite rising international condemnation. Winnie, a talented communicator and propagandist, remains committed to the struggle. But despite her husband's fate, she has no concerns about turning to violence when it comes to the pursuit of the ANC's goals. She is implicated in the brutal punishment, even murder, of suspected police informants, which in turn makes her increasingly a subject of the government's attention, suffering imprisonment, torture, and internal banishment.

In 1976, when there are major black uprisings in the country, the ANC has virtually nothing to do with them. A year later, the activist Steve Biko becomes a symbol of the anti-apartheid movement after he is beaten to death by state security officers. But he has no ANC links either. And it seems like Mandela and his organization will become mere footnotes in history. Mandela's 60th birthday in 1978, however, offers the ANC an opportunity for renewal. And it partly resurrected itself by inventing him as a great leader, by really very self-consciously

choosing to personify, to embody the struggle in the form of one person. And it began with a deceptively simple campaign in 1978 to celebrate his 60th birthday, a campaign that the anti-apartheid movement took around the world. It's hard to emphasize what an ingenious campaign it was. It was empty of political ideology. It was simply saying, here is a man who's been in jail far too long and his country will not be free until he is freed. By the 1980s, the Release Mandela campaign is cutting through internationally, permeating

popular culture around the world. The time has come for him to embark on a new, distinct phase of his extraordinary life. His genius always lay in theater. His genius always lay in how one goes about when presenting oneself in a way that embodies what the spirit of time. So in the 1950s he was the dapper lawyer in expensive clothes and a good car and understood that that exuded a very, very powerful image of black dignity. In 1960 he understood that the turn to violence required a very different image and that's

when he grew his hair and put on a trench coat and projected himself as a gorilla. In 1964, he switched to being a martyr. And strangely enough, in prison, he watched this mythical Nelson Mandela form on the outside, quite detached from him, and learned to play it, learned very quickly who this Nelson Mandela evolving in international cultural circuits was, and Cotton Donnan began to play him very well.

For much of the 1970s, the ANC was in large part run by a leadership that escaped prison by leaving the country. Now, though, it redoubles its guerrilla operations within South Africa. But with no sign of give from the government, outbreaks of violence in black townships are commonplace, supplemented by increased activity from MK guerrillas. By the mid-1980s, the country seems on the brink of civil war.

But Mandela, who has by then been moved to Polesmoor Prison in Cape Town, is determined to do whatever it takes to avoid it. Mandela firmly, firmly believes that violence is corrosive and destructive and that his country absolutely cannot go into civil war, that it will never come out of it. Or if it does, it will be so damaged there won't be any pieces to pick up. Informal secret talks begin between Mandela and representatives from President P.W. Borta's government. Both sides are seeking a path to a sustainable future,

although exactly what that is remains unclear. The government holds out the possibility of freeing some political prisoners and legalizing the ANC. If in return the ANC renounces violence, distances itself from communist ideology and drops its demands for majority rule, all steps too far for Mandela. He begins these talks secretly. He knows that if his comrades find out about them, they will tell him to stop. It's probably his greatest moments of leadership, and it's also a maverick moment. He decides to break rank and do this behind people's backs.

Elsewhere, international economic and cultural sanctions against the apartheid regime gather pace. 1988 sees London's Wembley Stadium host a tribute concert to Mandela, viewed on television by some 200 million people. But though Mandela is moved again following a bout of tuberculosis, the regime is resolute in its commitment to keep him incarcerated for now. Negotiations continue apace, and eventually the the new president F.W. de Klerk accepts the principle of power sharing. He begins to release political prisoners

but then shocks everyone in early February 1990 by lifting the 30-year ban on the ANC. For Mandela, there is more good news to come. It's the 11th of February, 1990. A hot, dusty day at Victor Wörster prison, about 50 miles from Cape Town in the Western Cape. The sort of day when the insects are out in force. A journalist bumps along the sun-kissed road in his car, past excitable crowds, under a footbridge heaving with pedestrians, his eyes fixed on the low-rise compound up ahead.

While still some distance away, he parks up behind a seemingly miles-long line of vehicles. Getting out, he swats at a fly whirring at the back of his neck, and continues his journey at a brisk walk until he comes to the throng of media. Victor Verster is a farm prison, and normally the area around it is quiet.

The facility sits in a picturesque valley nestled between mountains, ideal for farming and winemaking. But today it is alive with a mass of humanity. Not just armies of the press and TV crews, but crowds of ordinary people who just want to be here to witness a historic moment. The chance to catch a glimpse of their long hidden hero. The journalist watches for signs of movement within the prison, determined not to miss the big moment. At just before a quarter past four in the afternoon, at last it comes. At the gates of the prison, the journalist makes out two figures, a man and a woman. The man wears a smart grey suit and dark tie.

All eyes on them, the couple stride forward surrounded by officials and supporters. The crowd noise rises from an excited hum to wild approval. Victor Verster has been Mandela's home for the last 14 months, but after 27 years in total, he emerges now as a free man, gripping the hand of his great love, Winnie. as a free man, gripping the hand of his great love Winnie. The journalist scribbles shorthand notes as the couple raised their hands to the sky, their fists clenched in defiance. From the unbearable solitude of nearly three decades into the adoring arms of the multitude in the blink of an eye. Mandela, smiling but determined, pauses to shake hands with some of his supporters,

sharing a few words with them. He goes at a stately pace, but is gradually ushered towards awaiting motorcade. News of his release emerged only in the last few hours. In fact, the journalist has learned Mandela pleaded with de Kloek for more time for his people to prepare. Now, the near mythical figure gets into his car, headed for Cape Town, where a quarter of a million excited fans await him. The wheels spin in the dirt of the road, and the car heads off.

The journalist sprints through the slowly dissipating crowd to write up his version of events, determined to be the first with the scoop. A new chapter in the nation's story. Mandela is driven to Cape Town's City Hall through packed streets. There he gives a speech declaring his commitment to peace and reconciliation, but refuses to call off armed struggle until further compromise from the government. Mandela walked out as a free man and the battle for the future began. I think when the clerk unbanned ANC and released Mandela, he was not really imagining a transition to a maturitarian democracy. He believed that if the transition could be dragged out long enough,

the ANC would lose its luster among ordinary black South Africans. He could accumulate some black allies himself. They may even win an election. He imagined a very complicated, contorted constitutional arrangement where racial minorities would still have a veto. The future of the country is uncertain. But it is also not at all clear who will now lead the ANC. Oliver Tambo has done the job remotely from London since 1967.

But though he's now living back in South Africa, his health is failing. Mandela's release changes the terms of the struggle, but he's been away such a long time. And some in the organization harbor suspicions about him, not least because of those secret talks with the government. But it takes mere days to become apparent that he lies at the center of everything. World leaders clamor to be seen with him. He has audiences with President Bush in the US, Margaret Thatcher in the UK, President Mitterrand in France, the Pope, and many more. His decades as a political prisoner have imbued him with an aura of moral authority.

At the same time, he has other, more personal ambitions in his sights. He is desperate to resurrect his marriage to Winnie. But so much has changed. Winnie has changed. While she has been key to keeping his struggle alive, she is also convinced that black rule will only be achieved through militaristic campaigning and violent means. Back in the 80s, she gathered together a ruthless personal bodyguard known as Mandela United

FC. But she used this group to assert her authority less against the white oppressor and more to out-muscle her rivals within the anti-apartheid movement who favored different strategies. Known for its barbaric methods of retaliation against anyone it suspects of working against her, it has been operating as an armed gang, terrorizing local neighborhoods. Within a few months of Mandela's release, she is arrested and charged for her part in the 1988 kidnapping and murder of a 14-year-old black activist, incorrectly suspected of being a police informant. Mandela struggles to comprehend his wife's involvement.

I guess there's no other way of saying it. He abused his new power in order to try and save his wife. So for instance, she was on trial for kidnapping. The days before the trial was going to begin, several of the accused disappeared. They had been spread across the country, across the border by ANC people, not directly at Mandela's command, but certainly by the people he delegated to deal with the situation. Nonetheless, on the 14th of May 1991, she is convicted.

Despite these personal struggles, there is an inevitability to her husband's election as the ANC president in July. But it's clear too, that the couple cannot simply pick up where they left off in 1962. And it's very sad because she has moved on. She has lived a full adult life. She has fallen in love with other people.

She has also drifted from him politically. She now more than anything thinks that apartheid must end violently or not end at all. He is going the opposite direction. And so in his mind is the woman he loves and his political ally, but really they've become political opponents. And emotionally she's become very detached from him. And so her story is, it's a complicated one. It's one of audacity and mobility and great personal power, but also one of a person going off the rails. It's a complex story, and she's a complex person.

In 1992, they separate with a view to divorce. A devastating personal blow to him. But he hides his pain away from public gaze. He really felt broken. He really believed that the apartheid regime had made his life a tragedy, ruined his wife, ruined his children. He believed that he shouldn't show any of that on the public stage, that he was his people's leader. And if what he did to them was show anger and ignite theirs, he would drag his country into flames.

And so he developed a new persona, which had never really been there before. And that was one of a very evocular, cheerful, non-threatening man who could forgive. And he irradiated that persona into the world. There is, though, tension between Mandela and de Klerk amid growing civil violence and the ANC's orchestration of a general strike in protest of the slow progress of talks. Although committed to breaking the stalemate, the clerk once guarantees about white minority

protection that bogged down negotiations. But in September 1992, the two men agree to set up a body to prepare a new national constitution. The fragility of the process is clear a few months later when a white extremist murders prominent ANC figure Chris Harny. But somehow, Mandela and the clerk keep talks on track, jointly receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. On the 26th of April 1993, millions of black and white South Africans cast their ballot in the country's first multiracial democratic election. The ANC wins with over 62% of the vote.

Mandela is duly elected the nation's president. His inauguration takes place in Pretoria on the 10th of May in front of a global television audience of a billion. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace. We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well. That none of us acting alone can't achieve success.

We must therefore act together as a united people for national reconciliation. Amid this day of triumph, he emphasizes that he will stay for a single term only. Now, well into his 70s, he resolves to hand much of the day-to-day running of the government to his deputy, Thabo Umbike. But he plays the ceremonial aspects of the office to perfection, helping South Africa

shed its former status as something of an international pariah. Everyone from the people on the street to the most fated celebrities and powerful politicians want to be seen with him. He works hard, too, to head off what he sees as perhaps the greatest threat to the new democracy — a white backlash. In 1995, for example, he visits Betsy Verwood, the widow of Hendrik Verwood, one of the architects of apartheid, before his assassination while serving as Prime Minister in 1966. The image of Mandela putting a protective arm around the diminutive lady by now in her

90s becomes a powerful symbol of the new age. But even this pales against the moment Mandela hands Francois Pina the Rugby World Cup. South Africa meanwhile hopes to heal some of its festering wounds by setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It invites both victims and perpetrators of historical human rights violations to give their testimony, with wrongdoers offered the chance of amnesty. While it does not satisfy everyone, for others it is a step towards moving on from the injustices of the past.

In 1998 Mandela marries his third wife, Grassa-Machelle, the widowed former First Lady of Mozambique. A year later the ANC wins another term. Mandela, as promised, hands the reins of power to his successor Mbeke before announcing his retirement from public life. He battles ill health, including prostate cancer, but as a global elder statesman, his sporadic public announcements, such as his opposition to the US-led war in Iraq, continue to carry weight. In 2013, his health goes into steep decline, and on the 5th of December he passes away aged 95, surrounded by family at his Johannesburg home.

There follows 10 days of national mourning, with the grief rippling around the globe. A modern life held in virtually unprecedented esteem, but one wrought with personal contradictions. I think that he understood that without him and without the role that he chose to play South Africa may have ended up in a very different place, in a very horrible place. And I think that he was immensely proud of that. But he never confused his public life with his private life.

He never believed that his fame, his mythical status, could substitute for personal happiness. Very few people got close to him, but those who did heard him say that he was a very sad person, that he believed that the prime of his life was stolen from him, that it could never be returned. Through immense personal sacrifice and strength, coupled with rare political intelligence and an almost unique ability to connect with people from different walks of life,

Nelson Mandela led South Africa to be the promised land of multiracial democracy. Yet his country remains troubled. The divisions between white and black no longer written into law but still starkly apparent. And the discussion still continues about his lasting achievements. The cost at which they were won and how the new South Africa has coped without its figurehead. South Africa is not in a great place now. It is more unequal than it's ever been. There's an enormous amount of poverty and unemployment.

Almost all of it is black. And so, understandably, young black South Africans are angry. And Mandela's popularity among young black people is waning. Many young black people feel that he bent over backwards for white South Africa, that he wasn't hard enough, that he didn't get a good enough deal. I think that that is harsh and unfair. Firstly, I think young people don't understand quite how close South Africa was to falling apart in the early 90s, and that without Mandela, they may not be a country for them to complain about. I also think that many of the problems

that evolved in South Africa subsequently are the fault of his successes. I think the deal that he negotiated was a good one. It was majority rule. It was a very progressive constitution. There was no minority visa. And I think that what happened after that actually has very little to do with Mandela. So yeah, I think his legacy is a profound one and a really important one. Next time on Short History of we'll bring you a short history of Butch Cassidy.

Butch Cassidy is the oldest of 13 children. And so he had that sense of being the oldest and being the leader is something that carried over from his growing up years to then being the leader of a wild and bully gang. That's next time. If you can't wait a week until the next episode, you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiza Plus. Head to www.noiza.com forward slash subscriptions for more information.