It was two decades ago, but I recall those heady times as if it was yesterday. I was a 22-year-old rookie reporter at the now-defunct anti-Apartheid weekly newspaper, South, in Cape Town when we heard that Nelson Mandela was going to be released from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl, about 50km from the city centre. On that Sunday Feb.11, 1990, we were all off to the Grand Parade where Mandela was to speak after his release. The news had been circulating for a while that this was going to happen. A week earlier, on Feb. 2, then State President FW De Klerk announced in parliament the unbanning of all liberation organizations, including the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party. Everyone knew Mandela's release was coming, ending 27 years of incarceration. Talks had started years before with Mandela when it became clear to the white minority government that internal dissent and international isolation was causing a severe economic decline. By October 1989, the first public part of the deal between the ANC and the National Party, for power-sharing and democratic change, was pushed into play. This was the release from Robben Island prison of seven senior ANC members, including the late Walter Sisulu, an elder statesman of the organization and one-time law partner of Mandela. It was the first steps towards what would eventually become the dismantling of an entire ideology of white supremacy, of centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid, codified in the most repressive and inhumane laws the world has ever seen. South had been at the forefront, with a number of other anti-Apartheid newspapers, including the New Nation, Vrye Weekblad and the Weekly Mail, of doing what many other established newspapers were afraid to do, cover the abuses and excesses of the dying minority government. Where we had once been harassed and banned by the police for our reporting, things were changing rapidly. We previously had to find creative ways of getting around media laws that outlawed the publication of photographs of banned persons. That was all history because that entire week, there were pictures of Mandela plastered all over our newspaper. We felt it was our time. Finally freedom from the government that had ruthlessly oppressed and marginalized the black majority for years. When we used the word black, it was to describe indigenous African people, and people like myself, with mixed European and Asian ancestry, many of whom had been brought to the country as political prisoners, slaves and laborers, from India, Malaysia, Indonesia and China. Many could trace their family roots to the first prisoners from Asia brought to the Cape more than 300 years before It seemed like the weather itself was playing along, a glorious deep blue sky framed a sweltering summer day. Cars and buses, packed with people, were flooding into to the city centre, the green and gold and black of the liberation movement's flags were streaming from windows, hooters were honking. Groups of youth were singing freedom songs and performing the toyi-toyi, an energetic war-dance, where they'd stamp their feet and mimic the sound of the weapons – the AK-47s, the bazookas, the handguns - they had carried in the war against the hated Afrikaner. Everyone was wearing the colourful t-shirts of their organizations, the United Democratic Front – the organization the ANC had been operating under in South Africa to bypass emergency laws. Others were wearing the colors of the Pan Africanist Congress and the Azanian People's Organization. Reports indicated afterwards that 60,000 people were cramped into the area. On the small balcony of the city hall, various speakers were keeping the crowd entertained, providing blow-by-blow accounts of when our beloved Madiba would arrive. Madiba is Mandela's clan name. At Victor Verster prison, the world's media were camped out waiting for him to leave prison. We'd see pictures later of how the 71-year-old came out, walking so upright in that familiar stiff gait, in a darkish suit, hand-in-hand with his wife Winnie. At his side were future Cabinet ministers and business tycoons. We had arrived early that morning and would have to wait until late afternoon, but we didn't mind the sun and the crowds and the tiredness. It was late in the afternoon and the shadows were cast over half of the Grand Parade when it happened. They led him onto the small balcony. There was a moment of disbelief, then we knew it was Madiba. As he appeared and lifted his right fist in the air, in a salute, there was a collective outpouring of such deep emotion from the crowd that I cannot really adequately describe it. Even now as I write this, I can feel a lump in my throat. It was cry for him and for us, for the death of our friends, comrades, for the thousand humiliations of petty Apartheid that we, our parents, and our ancestors before had to endure. Above all it was a cry of utter joy and happiness. When he spoke, a hush fell over the crowd. We were mezmerized. It's a time forever preserved in my memory. There were still many tough times to come. Today there are still so much unfulfilled expectations in the new South Africa because of the dire poverty of millions of citizens who are still waiting for the fruits of liberation. But Mandela made us feel human that day. We would never again be turned away because of the color of our skin, from so-called white restaurants, cinemas, beaches, playgrounds and sports stadiums. We had choices: whom to marry, which neighbourhood to live in, the schools our children would attend, and even where we would be buried. It was his release. And it was ours.
