In jail Mandela was Confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing, he was forced to do hard labor in a quarry.  However, Mandela's resolve remained unbroken, and while remaining the symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid movement, he led a movement of civil disobedience at the prison that coerced South African officials into drastically improving conditions on Robben Island.

In 1989, F.W. DE Klerk became South African president and set about dismantling apartheid. DE Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions. and in February 1990 ordered the release of Nelson Mandela.

The iconic image of that moment – a lean, beaming Mandela in a dark suit emerging from Victor Verster prison holding hands with Winnie, both raising triumphant clenched fist salutes – belied the chaos around them. The first person to shake Mandela's hand as he exited the prison gates was John Batters by, a journalist with the Christian Science Monitor, who had arrived on the scene five minutes before only to walk straight into Mandela, who greeted him with his trademark bonhomie (much to the chagrin of the rest of the journalist pack, who had been waiting outside the gates for 11 hours.

The release, at 5 pm, was an hour late. Mandela had not been seen in     public in almost three decades, and that was in 1962, 14 years before South Africa got television. He had been absent all that time. Yet in his absence he had grown ever more present.

The convoy stopped a few times so that Mandela could get out and speak to ordinary South Africans along the route. People stared dazed and disbelieving as the convoy made its slow, 40-mile journey to down town Cape Town. In the city centre, the expectant crowd of more than 60,000 crushed into the Grand Parade in front of the City Hall, and in the extreme heat, grew restless. Late afternoon gave way to evening and hundreds of people fainted and had to be treated by the first-aid ambulances. Skirmishes broke out and a number of people were shot by police.