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25 years today

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    25 years today

    Nelson Mandela was released from jail.

    A great video which captures the day.

    #2
    25 years today

    How can this still be a nil? I know World is a bit deserted at the moment, but still.

    I remember watching the BBC's coverage on the telly and having a quiet chuckle to myself at the thought of the seething that must have been going on in 10 Downing Street at the time.

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      #3
      25 years today

      I remember it taking him ages to finally emerge from jail. Live TV news coverage of unrehearsed events was still a fairly new thing in those days (the Challenger, and Hillsborough, disasters had been about the only things the BBC had broken schedules for before) and it seemed like it was an hour's coverage of people talking over live shots of a crowd stood by a gate.

      The number of communist flags in the crowd (and the fact Mandela specifically thanks them in his speech) is something I'd forgotten, too. Given the context of the time, was the West's reluctance to help end apartheid tied up with the ideological battle against the commies?

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        #4
        25 years today

        blameless wrote:

        I remember watching the BBC's coverage on the telly and having a quiet chuckle to myself at the thought of the seething that must have been going on in 10 Downing Street at the time.
        I'm sure there was some seething on the streets of Belfast too, where for a substantial number he remained a convicted terrorist.

        This was still almost a decade before the Good Friday Agreement.

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          #5
          25 years today

          I don't remember any such seething.
          There certainly would've been some dissent among the ruddy-faced Jim Allister fundamentalist faction in the DUP and QUB Young Unionist twats ( hi, David! ) but I'd say overall Mandela's release was warmly greeted.

          I remember when Winnie was convicted of the Stompy murder a man beside me in a newsagents saw the headline and said 'fucking hell - Nelson's never gonna get riding her'.

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            #6
            25 years today

            That's my recollection of the TV coverage too. And the walk itself I remember taking a while too.

            Was lucky enough to see him speak in Trafalgar Square whenever in the middle d-90s that was.

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              #7
              25 years today

              The whole day was surreal. There was the delay of Mandela emerging from the Victor Verster prison, which is near the town of Paarl, about 65km from Cape Town. That's an hour's drive at most. He came out at 16:15, but Mandela didn't arrive at Cape Town's City Hall, where he was going to make his first speech as a free man, until dusk.

              I'm not sure what he did all that time. Perhaps he wanted some private time. I know that he dropped in at a complete stranger's house for refreshments. Which is the most surreal incident that day.

              I've written before about that day, so I'm not going to go into details again. But at one point the rumour spread among the tens of thousands gathered on the square in front of the City Hall that Mandela had not been released. The mood turned a bit dark at that point. At around the same time, criminal elements looted kiosks that line one side of the square.

              Eventually Mandela's car appeared in Darling Street, where City Hall is located. I'd say it was about 50 metres from City Hall that it was quickly surrounded by overzealous well-wishers who proceeded to shake the vehicle and its contents.

              When Mandela eventually appeared, I was taken aback by his voice. I should have remembered it from a video showing Mandela in the early 1960s I had (which the security police confiscated in one of their raids), but I had forgotten that. So I had expected to hear a man with the sonorous voice of a powerful orator. Instead he sounded like a third-rate comedian trying to do a Japanese accent. The content of his speech made up for that disappointment.

              Before Mandela spoke, he was "introduced" by his old friend and fellow Rivonia prisoner, the great Walter Sisulu, who had been released in October 1989. Holding the microphone for Mandela was Cyril Ramaphosa, then a trade unionist, now the vice-president who returned to politics a couple of years ago after making zillions in business. Also on the balcony were Winnie Mandela, obviously, and Whitey Jacobs, who was the head-organiser of the events that day. And then there were a whole lot of random people standing around and hanging of the balcony of City Hall.

              The organisers seemed to have great confidence that nobody there that day had any intention of harming Mandela. Luckily, they were right in that nevertheless reckless assumption.

              Eventually we went home. On the way we stopped at a convenience store to buy something to drink and the Sunday newspaper. Another epochal event took place that weekend: Buster Douglas had knocked out Mike Tyson.

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