Mandela spent 18 years of his jail sentence on Robben Island. He was saved in a small cell with none plumbing, sleeping on a mat on the stone flooring. Through the day he did heavy work in a limestone quarry. “Lime could be very tough to dig, you realize, as a result of it is in layers. It is between layers of rock, onerous rock.’
The authorities did their greatest to maintain him hidden from the world. He was allowed to obtain guests annually, however just for half-hour. Regardless of his mom dying in 1968 and his eldest son dying in a automobile accident lower than a yr later, he was not allowed to attend their funerals. Nevertheless, he nonetheless managed to smuggle out letters advocating for the ANC.
In 1982 he was transferred to Pollsmoor Jail in Cape City, the place humid situations contributed to his being hospitalized with tuberculosis in 1988. The apartheid authorities periodically made affords to launch him throughout this time, however the freedom supplied was all the time topic to the federal government. situations, which Mandela resolutely refused. In 1989, FW de Klerk was elected president of South Africa. The next yr he introduced that he would carry the ban on the ANC and order Mandela’s imminent launch from jail.
On February 10, 1990, President De Klerk met Mandela to inform him he could be launched the following day. This time it was an unconditional launch. He could be a free man. However to President De Klerk’s shock, Nelson Mandela’s response appeared muted. “I thanked Mr. De Klerk after which mentioned that, on the danger of seeming ungrateful, I would like per week’s discover in order that my household and my group could possibly be ready,” he wrote in his autobiography, Lengthy Stroll to Freedom.
Shocked, President De Klerk, after a short session together with his advisers, backtracked and mentioned that he would in reality need to insist that Mandela depart jail as deliberate. Mandela relented and the 2 had a drink. The subsequent day he walked to his freedom and entered historical past. Three years later, as chief of the ANC, Mandela turned South Africa’s first black and democratic president.
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