I clearly remember what I was doing the day Nelson Mandela walked free from prison. I was scouring the dirt roads of the Kruger National Park for wildlife, cut off from all outside communication and woefully unaware that one of history's most significant events was unfolding in my very own country.
Later, on our way back out of the reserve, my now-husband and I stopped at a roadside café where the news stand casually informed us of the exhilarating event. Mandela's photo had been banned for my entire life; the vivid image of him leaving Victor Verster prison with his fist aloft was the first I had ever seen of this mythical person. I had missed out on his moment of deliverance, and felt utterly cheated.
But the real history was yet to unfold; though it riveted the nation, Mandela's release was no more significant as a stand-alone event than would be Aung San Suu Kyi's liberation from house arrest in Rangoon. For maximum impact, Mandela would need to be the human catalyst for superhuman change.
It was a calculated strategy, and it worked: the behemoth apartheid state shifted so thoroughly and so smoothly that even the erratic events of the past 20 years have done little to diminish South Africa's reputation as a miracle nation.
That black South Africans would follow the lead of Mandela, a Messiah-like figure who offered them the best chance of escaping decades of oppression, was a fait accompli. But a peaceful transition could only occur with the support of white South Africans, a group that was itself deeply divided across language and political lines and which was accustomed to the protection of a paternalistic regime.
White children of apartheid South Africa knew little more than what they were drip-fed by a manipulative, pro-censorship government: Mandela was a terrorist (he had pleaded guilty to sabotage but rejected violence), South Africa was threatened by neighbouring Marxist countries (hence its support of rebel groups like Renamo in Mozambique and Unita in Angola), and the ANC was violent, communistic and anti-white (as evidenced by the ANC-planted bombs that killed and maimed hundreds of civilians, military and police in the 1980s).
Apartheid politics was devoid not only of healthy debate and honest information, but of the nuances on which power turns. As they grappled with the notion of sharing 'their' country with all its inhabitants,