South Africans remember Mandela's 'indescribable' release

"Electric and yet so tense", is how Siraaj Cassiem described waiting in Cape Town on February 11, 1990, hoping to see former president Nelson Mandela emerge from prison after 27 years. "Up until then Madiba was a slogan on a T-shirt, a slogan on a poster... That was the first time in my life that I actually saw the man. It was really a moving experience," said Cassiem, who at the time was an 18-year-old political activist.
Although still in high school, Cassiem had played an active role in mass rallies calling for Mandela's release, who is often fondly called by his clan name Madiba in South Africa. "I saw Mandela walking hand in hand with his wife (Winnie) on TV, and then I heard on the radio that trains were free to Grand Parade (outside City Hall). I called a friend and we took the train. The atmosphere was amazing, I have never seen so many people, everybody was happy and singing freedom songs."
Paddi Clay was working for Canadian radio then, and said covering the release of Mandela was "the biggest story I have ever covered. It was a story I had been waiting for all my life. After that, I was quite happy to stop reporting." An estimated 50,000 supporters waited at Grand Parade, and some grew impatient as Mandela arrived five hours later than expected at City Hall, where he made his first speech as a free man.
Tempers flared under the blazing summer sun, and some people at the back of the crowd began looting shops and vendors. Police responded with teargas and rubber bullets. "When we got bored, we went to the back of the crowd to taunt and throw stones at the police," Cassiem said. Meanwhile, journalists prepared for the worst.
"There was a mini riot at the back of the Grand Parade at the same time, and you had that tension that you didn't know whether this incredible event would at any point go wrong and that this man who has spent so many years in prison was actually going to be assassinated," Clay said. "We all had that at the back of our minds," she said. Allan Boesak, leader of the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front, helped calm the crowd before Mandela arrived.