After 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, South Africa, hand in hand with his wife Winnie, into a wall of cameras and cheering supporters. President F.W. de Klerk's decision to release him, following secret negotiations and mounting international sanctions, signaled the beginning of the end for apartheid. Mandela's calm, unbroken bearing after nearly three decades behind bars became one of the century's defining images.
The release was delayed by hours because the crowds outside the prison gates had grown so large and chaotic that officials worried for Mandela's safety. When he finally appeared, at 4:14 in the afternoon, the 71-year-old raised his fist in the ANC salute, a gesture the world had not seen him make in any photograph since his 1962 trial, because cameras had been banned from South African prisons.
Mandela later admitted that his stride that day was partly performance: he wanted to appear strong and unbroken for the cameras, even though his eyes, unaccustomed to the crush of photographers' flashes and the open sky, struggled to adjust. He had spent 18 of his 27 years on Robben Island breaking limestone in a quarry, and had not addressed a mass audience in nearly three decades. That evening, from the balcony of Cape Town's City Hall, he delivered his first public speech since 1962, quoting his own 1964 trial statement: he was still prepared to die for the cause, but he called for peace and reconciliation, not vengeance. Four years later he would be President.