After that, one of the activists present, Saleem Mowzer, suggested his house in Rondebosch East. Later, a concerned Archbishop Desmond Tutu tracked them down and urged Mandela’s party to head to the City Hall, or there would be a riot.*

Eventually, in the early evening, Mandela was able to speak to the people. He greeted the expectant multitude in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all:

‘I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people,’ he said. ‘Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I, therefore, place the remaining years of my life in your hands.’2

Writing in the New Yorker, Zoë Wicomb captures the moment well: ‘Mandela looked nothing like the artists’ renderings of an aging boxer, which had been circulating. That day, a tall, handsome stranger strode into the world. His face had been transfigured into sculpted planes that spoke of bygone Xhosa-Khoi relations, and the awkward hair parting was gone. Supermodels and philosophers sighed alike.’3

Even though Mandela was still first among equals, he was now as aware of danger as everyone else. He was also conscious of the violence that was wrecking the country. Every province had its tale of woe, with Natal bearing the brunt of brutality. This is where the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), backed by covert elements within the South African Police Force, waged war on the ANC and its supporters.† The Natal Midlands and many parts of urban Natal became no-go zones both for law enforcement and the ANC.

One of the memorable, chastening moments for Mandela came two weeks after his release, during an intense period of fighting in Natal, when he addressed a crowd of more than a hundred thousand people at Durban’s Kings Park Stadium.

‘Take your guns, your knives and your pangas, and throw them into the sea!’‡ Mandela pleaded. A low rumble of disapproval started off somewhere in the crowd and rose into a crescendo of catcalls. Stoically, Mandela continued; he had to deliver his message. ‘Close down the death factories. End this war now!’4

The war that didn’t end with Mandela’s plea had its roots in the past and sought to frustrate the emergence of the future. Slowly, ineluctably, Mandela’s dream towards a democratic South Africa was being realised. The last few stumbling blocks were being knocked aside like skittles. A notable development was the return, on 13 December 1990, of Oliver Tambo, who had left South Africa in 1960 on a secret mission to rebuild the banned ANC in exile. Returning to a tumultuous welcome after three decades as external leader of the liberation movement, the seventy-three-year-old ANC president seemed frail but happy as he acknowledged the greetings of a throng of ANC leaders, foreign ambassadors and miscellaneous dignitaries. Standing with his one-time law partner, Nelson Mandela, Tambo waved from the balcony of the Jan Smuts International Airport, near Johannesburg, to some five thousand supporters, who cheered and sang and danced. Nelson Mandela, then the ANC deputy president, told the crowd: ‘We welcome him with open arms as one of the greatest heroes of Africa.’5 Then the two men disappeared into a sedan as their motorcade departed with a police escort.

Two days later, the ANC held its first national consultative conference at Nasrec, near Soweto. It was an emotional moment when Tambo gave his report, effectively handing the ANC back to the people of South Africa. The singing was electrifying, the songs from exile in counterpoint to ditties and dirges and chants of mainly young people who would be manning the barricades in restless townships of the East Rand before the night of the following day. A carnival spirit among the delegates intermittently leavened the solemnity of the occasion. Comrades fresh from prison, some toting prison-issue duffel bags, were meeting relatives and friends after long years of separation. Someone, pointing to the concentration of many echelons of ANC leadership – from Mandela and Tambo and the old men from Robben Island, hoary-haired luminaries, veterans and NEC members down to the kursanti (rookies) in faux-battledress attire – quipped that the whole consultative conference idea had been hatched up by the enemy to eliminate the ANC with one powerful bomb.

One part of the proceedings that had even some of the battle-hardened delegates weeping openly was the parading of a dozen men who had returned from Zimbabwean prisons. They had been in jail since the valiant though ill-advised joint Zimbabwe African People’s Union–ANC campaigns in Wankie and Sipolilo, in 1967 and 1969 respectively, where they had been captured after skirmishes with Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith’s British South Africa Police and South African security forces. Each of the inmates had been on death row awaiting execution before being reprieved when Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front took power in April 1980.

The conference took place at a time of great violence, almost approximating a low-intensity war. It was therefore not surprising that the delegates called for the establishment of self-defence units.

Significantly, two days later, on 18 December, the government finally gazetted legislation, publicising a long-awaited law to allow exiles to return to South Africa. This was a measure to satisfy one of the remaining obstacles to negotiation.