In critiquing their disastrous hubris, he tried to convey the magnitude of the resultant betrayal of the cause. He could also have been expressing his own inner fear of what might happen, when he writes about situations where ‘freedom and the installation of a democratic government bring erstwhile liberators from the bush to the corridors of power, where they now rub shoulders with the rich and mighty’.

He continues that it is ‘in situations of this nature that some former freedom fighters run the risk of forgetting principles and those who are paralysed by poverty, ignorance and diseases; some then start aspiring to the lifestyle of the oppressors they once detested and overthrew’.9

The genesis of these observations can be seen in Mandela’s own life, where discipline was his watchword. He followed a strict regimen of exercise and kept himself in good physical shape. He was used to doing things for himself and continued to do so after his release, on one occasion astounding the cook assigned to him, Warrant Officer Swart, by insisting that he would do the washing up and cook his own meals.

Mandela writes: ‘One day, after a delicious meal prepared by Mr Swart, I went into the kitchen to wash the dishes. “No,” he said, “that is my duty. You must return to the sitting room.” I insisted that I had to do something, and that if he cooked, it was only fair for me to do the dishes. Mr Swart protested, but finally gave in. He also objected to the fact that I would make my bed in the morning, saying it was his responsibility to do so. But I had been making my bed for so long that it had become a reflex.’10

To a large degree, Mandela had observed a soldier’s code of conduct long before his own arrest in 1962. He expected his confrères, members of a select fellowship of committed fighters, to be beyond reproach; the apartheid machinery was rigid and regimented and would need an equally disciplined force to resist and finally overthrow it.

‘Unless their political organisation remains strong and principled, exercising strict discipline on leaders as well as ordinary members alike, [and] inspires its membership, apart from government programmes, to develop social initiatives to uplift the community, the temptation to abandon the poor and to start amassing enormous wealth for themselves becomes irresistible.’11

From inside prison, Mandela had been monitoring world affairs, noting with dismay that not a few of the leaders on the African continent were in the grip of megalomania. From the northernmost point down to the tip of the continent, self-appointed leaders, their uniforms bristling with medals, inflicted untold misery on their subjects in countries where plunder of state resources was the order of the day. The people became prey to famine, violence, pestilence and extreme penury. About this, Mandela says: ‘They come to believe that they are indispensable leaders. In cases where the constitution allows it, they become life presidents. In those cases where a country’s constitution imposes limitations, they generally amend the constitution to enable themselves to cling to power for eternity.’12

Questions about how he was going to lead roiled in his head when the moment of his release came. The larger world promised to introduce complications more daunting than the negotiations he had conducted with his captors, including when he prevailed over the prison authorities about the time and place in which he was to be released. De Klerk’s government had wanted to release him much earlier, and certainly without fanfare, to his home in Soweto, but Mandela had baulked. He wanted to be released in Cape Town where he could thank the people of the city before going home:

‘I was saying that I want to be released at the gate of Victor Verster. From there I’ll look after myself. You have no right to say I should be taken to Johannesburg. I want to be released here. And so eventually they agreed to release me at the gate of Victor Verster.’ In addition, Mandela asked for his release to be postponed by seven days for the people ‘to prepare’.13

It was in prison that Mandela perfected what would later become one of his greatest strengths, the ability to appreciate that a person in front of him, friend or foe, was a complex human being with many facets to his or her personality. One of his regrets, while cameras clicked and the crowds were in rhapsodies over his release on the afternoon of 11 February 1990, was that he had not been able to say goodbye to the prison staff. To him they were more than an assemblage of uniformed functionaries at the sharp end of an unjust regime; they were people with families, who, like everyone else, had anxieties about life.

This, of course, did not mean that Mandela would let evil off the hook, nor was he wilfully oblivious to the excesses of the white apartheid regime. In his single-minded preparation for the future, which had started with the closing of the prison gates behind him, he knew he had to unburden himself of the clutter of resentment and concentrate on what lay ahead. Even if he had started his sentence as an individual, Mandela had been part of a committed fellowship called upon by the exigency of struggle to sacrifice the best years of their lives for a greater good.

Going out alone, with the rest of the Rivonia defendants and fellow prisoners having been released earlier, he knew there would be millions of eyes looking to see what he had become. For months Mandela had been meeting and conducting telephone conversations with a number of people from the ANC and the United Democratic Front (UDF), an umbrella organisation with a broad range of affiliates, including hundreds of youth organisations, scores of civic associations and student organisations. Hours before the actual release, he had consulted with members of the National Reception Committee,* a selection of battle-hardened activists and leaders of the mass democratic movement, which included Cyril Ramaphosa, Valli Moosa, Jay Naidoo and Trevor Manuel, all of whom would play important roles in the future government.† Almost all long-term prisoners have a heightened perception for situations and read them more quickly than others for the simple reason that their survival depends on it. Therefore, while excited at the prospect of being released, Mandela picked up on the anxiety of the ANC representatives who had received very little notice of the change in his release venue from Soweto to Cape Town.

‘The notice was less than twenty-four hours,’ said Valli Moosa. ‘We were quite shocked but none of us gave in to the temptation to ask that he be kept in any longer, though we wanted to ask that.’14

Mandela understood the dilemma that his release posed for both the government and the ANC as a measure of the complexity of the road ahead.