It was the moment the world had been waiting for. A moment of truth. A free Mandela meant a free world. An act of exorcism of an evil spirit called apartheid that would set black and white South Africa free. On 11 February 1990, he walked out of the Victor Vester Prison in Cape Town, hand in hand with his then wife, Winnie Mandela. The world waited to welcome him as their messiah.

When the history of South Africa is retold, one can conveniently calculate the years from BM (Before the release of Mandela) and AM (After the release of Mandela). Such is the significance of his triumph 27 years after his incarceration in 1963. At the Rivonia trial in the same year, apartheid judges would of course find him guilty of terrorism and various trumped-up charges. They had the power to impose the death sentence. Mandela told them in their face that he was prepared to die for his ideal of a free South Africa. Perhaps sensing martyrdom, they chose to imprison him for life. There have been analyses upon analyses as to why the formidable apartheid regime chose to negotiate itself out of power. It had little choice. Apartheid was a festering wound that was going to get worse with each passing day.

Already in the 1980s all the vestiges of this monumental human injustice was falling apart at the seams. Mass protests orchestrated by the United Democratic Front, the proxy of the exiled African National Congress (ANC), were paralysing the nation. Already the Group Areas Act that separated black and white was no longer enforceable as black South Africans slowly found their way into white areas.

The overstretched security forces had lost their willpower. Bantustans created by the white overlords were not viable. The international community was becoming more strident, angrily calling for sanctions. The country was becoming more and more ungovernable, and the interdependence of black and white along the labour and business fronts respectively meant that separate development was a delusion.

Historical events also expedited apartheid’s demise. While the Cold War between the West and East lasted, it was convenient for the apartheid regime to claim to be fighting communism. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union, that cover was blown. Not to mention another moment of truth, when the much-vaunted apartheid army was soundly thrashed in Angola by Cuban forces and the MPLA at the famous battle of Cuito Cuanavale. Namibia’s independence from South Africa followed in 1990 and South Africa’s was not far behind. Perhaps when major banks abroad called in their loans to the South African government, the regime, hit in the pocket, had no choice but to close shop. Bankrupt Apartheid sorely needed a liquidator. But who would carry the white cross? F. W.de Klerk, the man who had the courage to call it a day, explains why apartheid did not work: “The whites wanted too much land for themselves – they did not make the offer attractive enough. Secondly, we, the different races, became economically interdependent, because of economic growth. Actually we became an omelette, and you can never unscramble an omelette. Thirdly, and maybe the most important reason, is that the majority of blacks felt that, that was not how they wanted their political rights. So we admitted to ourselves that we had failed and we had to devise a new vision that would ensure justice for all.” Noble words, but not the whole truth.

Die Groot Krokodil (the big crocodile ) P. W. Botha, prime minister from 1978-1984 and executive president from 1984-1989, started the liquidation process. When he gave his “crossing the Rubicon speech” in 1985, the expectation was that the moribund apartheid policy would end. The Big Crocodile, however, developed cold feet. Instead he sought to place conditions on Mandela for his freedom, seeking to wrest the moral high ground from him. Either Mandela renounced violence, thereby breaking ranks with the ANC, or refused to renounce violence, thereby confirming his commitment to “terrorism” and the justification for his continued incarceration.

Mandela rejected the offer. In his reply, read out at a mass rally in Soweto by his daughter Zindzi, then a teenager, he refused to negotiate his freedom and pledged to the people that his freedom was inextricably linked to theirs.

When P. W. Botha had a stroke in January 1989, he stubbornly clung to power, until he was pushed out by his successor F. W. de Klerk, who started a chain of events that culminated in the unconditional release of Mandela. Before then, there had been several contacts between the ANC, managed by the revered Oliver Tambo, and the apartheid regime, as well as several top level meetings with Mandela himself.

The events that unfolded after his release and the subsequent unbanning of all liberation movements are well documented. To his credit, F. W. de Klerk, in one fell swoop, unravelled everything and convinced fearful whites that he was in control of the political process. It was simply the right thing to do. Up to this day, there are right-wingers who see him as a traitor.

After the momentous 11 February release, negotiations after negotiations followed between all parties, interspersed with violence, leading to a new constitution and the first multi-racial elections on 27 April 1994. De Klerk and Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 but even that has been contentious as De Klerk was seen as backing Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Zulubased Inkatha Freedom Party in a low-intensity war against the ANC that claimed several hundred black lives in the run-up to negotiations – an action calculated to weaken the ANC.