Mandela released. Nelson Mandela, leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, is released after 27 years of imprisonment. A member of the African National Congress (ANC), he had promoted nonviolent resistance to apartheid, but following the massacre in the black township of Sharpeville (1960), where South African police killed 69 unarmed protesters, he strengthened his militancy. In 1964, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment in the horrific Robben Island prison. But Mandela did not give up, and while in prison he led a civil disobedience movement that succeeded in improving prison conditions. In 1989, the new South African president, FW de Klerk, began the process of abolishing apartheid. After his release from prison, Mandela led the ANC’s negotiations with the de Klerk government to end apartheid and in 1994 became South Africa’s first elected black president.
