Crowds mark 20 years since Mandela's release

South Africans today celebrated the steps that sounded apartheid’s death knell 20 years ago: Nelson Mandela walking to freedom after 27 years in prison.

Thousands gathered for commemorations near Cape Town at what was known in 1990 as Victor Verster, the last prison where Mandela was held.

The crowds milled around a 10ft bronze statue erected at the prison in 2008 depicting Mandela’s first steps as a free man. Exactly 20 years ago, Mandela emerged from Victor Verster on foot, hand-in-hand with his then-wife Winnie, fist raised, smiling but resolute.

“We knew that his freedom meant that our freedom had also arrived,” Cyril Ramaphosa, a leader in Mandela’s African National Congress who headed a welcome committee for Mandela in 1990, told the crowd at the prison today.

Earlier, Mr Ramaphosa and other ANC leaders had approached the gates of the prison to re-enact Mandela’s 1990 walk. Arms linked they stepped through, shouting: “Viva Mandela!”

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, divorced from Mandela in 1996, had been expected to join the re-enactment but did not. She told the BBC she would have found it too painful.

Just four years after Mandela’s release, South Africans held their first all-race elections, making Mandela their first black president. He stepped down after one five-year term, helping to entrench democracy in South Africa in contrast to elsewhere on the continent where politicians hung on to power through fraud and violence.

Mandela also is beloved for championing racial reconciliation, ensuring a peaceful transition that spared South Africa the chaos and destruction of anti-colonial wars elsewhere in Africa.

Since 1994, his ANC party has reduced the number of people living in poverty, built houses and delivered water, electricity and schools to blacks who had been without under apartheid. But needs remain great, and impatience has grown along with a gap between the poor and the rich – among them new black entrepreneurs.

Mvuso Mbali, 37, was in the crowd today and said he was also at the prison 20 years ago.

“And I still remember vividly what happened,” he said. “Today we are reinventing our freedom, and uniting our people to follow the values of Mandela.”

Others at the prison today said Mandela’s release – triumphant as it was - carried uncertainty too.

“When Mandela was released we did not know what was going to happen,” said Nontuntuzelo Faku at today‘s event.

But being at the prison 20 years later, she said, “makes me realise how far the country has come”.

South Africa marked the anniversary with speeches, photo exhibits tracing Mandela’s life, radio and TV specials and newspaper supplements across the country.

Mandela marked the anniversary of his release at home last week, reminiscing with fellow veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle for the camera’s of his daughter Zindzi’s production company, which was preparing a documentary called Conversations About That Day.

He also was expected to be in parliament later today for a State of the Nation address by President Jacob Zuma scheduled to coincide with the anniversary as a tribute.

Mandela, who will be 92 in July, has largely retired from public life.