Nelson Mandela: The Fight for Freedom

Nelson Mandela's life was dedicated to the struggle

to set his people free.

I think one of the attributes of a leader

is that he must be in it not for himself.

We're talking about a man who was threatened with death,

he was in jail, but he would not bend and when he came out,

he embraced grace, forgiveness...

It's hard to be that type of human.

In the fight against apartheid in South Africa,

Mandela felt violence was justified.

He was arrested on a charge of treason

and sentenced to life imprisonment.

For 27 years, he was cut off from the outside world.

One of the things that is difficult for me to comprehend

is that we spent such a long time here.

Finally, in 1990, he was set free.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Today, black and white recognise that apartheid has no future.

CHEERING

So help me God.

Forgiving his oppressors, Mandela led a new South Africa.

A freedom fighter who became a symbol of peace

and reconciliation across the world.

Mandela represents hope over despair,

with a particular kind of vision that the impossible can be achieved.

'He was the father of his country.'

He was a wise, good, great, but exceedingly shrewd and tough man

who understood that South Africa can only go forward together.

'Incredibly magnanimous.'

And with a wonderful capacity for including others.

In the summer of 2008,

over 40,000 people gathered in London's Hyde Park...

..for a concert.

For Nelson Mandela, let me see your hands!

Mandela was celebrating his birthday.

Looking pretty good for 90!

# La, la, la, la... #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, the birthday boy,

Nelson Mandela!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Mandela was so widely loved and respected

that he could persuade the rich,

the famous and the world's public to support him in his campaigns.

Tonight...

we can stand before you free.

But let us remind ourselves that our work is far from complete.

Where there is poverty and sickness,

including AIDS,

where human beings are being oppressed,

there is more work to be done.

Our work...

is for freedom for all.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Mandela's own fight for freedom took him on a remarkable journey

that began nearly a century ago.

He was born in 1918 in South Africa,

a country where black people were oppressed by a white minority.

His home was in this remote village in the region of the Transkei.

'He invited me to join him here in 2003,

'during the course of recording a series of interviews with him.'

This is an opportunity for me to come back here, I do.

Because it evokes very pleasant memories, my being here.

What kind of memories? Of childhood.

Raised in a large family, Mandela was only nine when his father died.

He went to live with his uncle, a tribal leader.

He was a hard-working boy and the first in his family to go to school.

'At that time,

'the government took no interest whatsoever

'in the education of blacks.'

It was the missionaries who bought land,

who put up buildings, who furnished them,

who employed and paid teachers.

And that is how I was brought up.

ORGAN MUSIC

When he was 19, he was sent to study at a Methodist college,

his introduction to a wider world.

Here, he heard for the first time about the ANC,

the African National Congress,

the party which was fighting for black South Africans.

'People were not talking so much about traditional leaders,

'but were talking about modern leaders.'

This opened my eyes to something totally different,

and all that was shaping my attitude.

TOWNSHIP SINGING

Mandela's family expected him

to take on the responsibilities of a tribal leader.

But he had other ideas.

He ran away, and that decision took Mandela for the first time

to the great city of Johannesburg.

Life in the city was strictly segregated.

His lodgings were in a township reserved for black people.

He once said he'd never seen such poverty.

Like many new arrivals, he found a job in the gold mines,

working as a night-watchman.

There, he saw at first hand the indignity suffered

by the black population, in a country dominated by white people.

He's a little bit thin.

HE PANTS

Their colours are good. Yes.

I think you'd better have an X-ray. There you are.

The young Mandela, known as Madiba to his friends,

was content to ignore politics and enjoy life.

He took up boxing, hoping he might one day be a champion.

DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

He enjoyed dancing

and other night-life attractions that Johannesburg offered.

Our hero was Victor Silvester, the chap who was a ballroom champion.

And we tried to imitate him.

Then we did the waltz and the tango, you know? And so on.

But I was never a champion.

But I liked dancing.

At one point, you were a kind of man about town.

I mean, you got all the best girls and...

No, that's true. It's true, is it?

You're not ashamed to say so? Oh, no, no, no. I mean, it's history.

Er, people know.

We think of him now and the world thinks of him now

as a great statesman. As an icon, practically.

And yet, he was a young man once,

and I knew him when he was young.

Vibrant and warm, friendly and naughty.

When he was 26, Mandela married. His wife Evelyn was a nurse.

They had three children.

Compared to most black people, Mandela was well educated.

He enrolled as a law student.

A senior member of the ANC spotted him

and got him a job as a legal clerk.

His name was Walter Sisulu

and he became the most important influence on Mandela's life.

He struck me at once to be the type of a man I had been looking for.

I looked upon him as a future leader himself.

He had qualities which I knew would be useful in our movement.

Mandela joined the ANC in 1944.

He helped set up a radical youth wing, determined to fight

the growing nationalism of the main white minority, the Afrikaners.

TRANSLATION:

The 1948 election brought the Afrikaner Nationalists to power.

Racism and segregation, long common practice, were now enshrined in law.

Black people had to carry passes to be in white-only areas.

They had to use separate entrances, separate seats,

in effect, lead separate lives.

Our policy is one which is called by an Afrikaans word, apartheid.

And I'm afraid that has been misunderstood so often.

It could just as easily

and perhaps much better be described as a policy of good neighbourliness.

To fight apartheid,

Mandela joined forces with another ANC activist, Oliver Tambo.

They founded the first black law firm in South Africa.

I met him for the first time

practising with Oliver Tambo, and already

at that time, you saw this sense of even-handedness.

I just thought he was a handsome, tall guy,

but I didn't think that he was going to cause a great deal of a splash.

HE CHUCKLES

How wrong we can be, yes. Mmm.

Much of Mandela's work was defending black people

against the rigid pass law offences.

But he also took the fight against injustice to the streets.

NEWS REPORT: In Johannesburg, premier city of South Africa,

thousands of coloured people went to attend a protest meeting

called by the African National Congress.

The ANC started a defiance campaign,

refusing to cooperate with laws they considered unjust.

By opposing the authorities, Mandela risked jail.

But he wanted to keep the protest peaceful.

We hated the apartheid regime.

We didn't want to have anything to do with them.

But our brains said, "If you don't talk to these people,

"this country is going to go up in smoke."

CHANTING

SHOUTING

The white government rejected dialogue.

Instead, as opposition to apartheid grew,

they tried to suppress it by force.

Mandela was arrested with 155 others,

charged with plotting against the state.

The Treason Trial, as it was known, dragged on

for four-and-a-half years.

Outside the court room, a new face could be seen among the crowd.

Mandela had met and fallen in love with a social worker,

Winnie Madikizela.

His marriage to Evelyn had ended in divorce

and, two years into the trial, he married Winnie.

When he met Winnie,

it was the end of the other girlfriends, in a sense.

He adored her. He loved her tremendously.

Winnie was the main attraction in his life.

But life with Winnie was never going to be easy.

He telephoned me and jokingly told me that he had married trouble.

His wife was up on a charge of assaulting a policeman.

I defended her successfully. That pleased him no end

and that started a relationship amongst the three of us.

I think that I probably defended her about 20 times

during a period of 20, 25 years.

Eventually, the Treason Trial came to an end

and the judges reached a verdict - not guilty.

The defendants celebrated,

determined to continue their campaign.

But white South Africa, feeling increasingly threatened,

prepared for the worst.

NEWS REPORT: Demonstrations against the South African government's

strict apartheid policies flare into shocking violence.

March 1960. A crowd of 10,000 protested in Sharpeville.

The police response was devastating.

The crowd refused to disperse. Police opened fire into the crowd...

69 were killed, many shot in the back while running away.

The authorities were unrepentant.

Mandela made a public display of burning his pass,

urging others to do the same.

The government responded by declaring a state of emergency.

The ANC was banned.

Now a wanted man, Mandela was forced to leave his family

and go underground, always on the move,

travelling in disguise.

By this time,

he was becoming impatient at the failure of peaceful protest.

His thoughts were turning to other methods.

It was quite clear that the apartheid regime did not want

to have any discussions with us.

And I was the man who proposed that we should take up arms.

Did you have any doubts about crossing the Rubicon of violence?

No, no. I was determined that the time had come.

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us

to continue talking peace and non violence

against a government whose reply is only savage attacks

on an unarmed and defenceless people.

The idea in my mind was not that we were going to win,

but that we were going to focus

the attention of the world on our demands.

Mandela now established a new military wing of the ANC.

Their targets were power supplies and government buildings.

The aim was to avoid loss of life, but Mandela later wrote

that if sabotage failed, he'd adopt other methods.

You said you were starting with sabotage,

but you said that if that didn't work, you'd consider terrorism

and guerrilla warfare.

How far is it right to go? We never embarked on terrorism.

But you said you would if sabotage didn't work, didn't you?

No, no. You wrote that you would.

Terrorism means any individual,

organisation or state

that attacks innocent individuals.

That's what terrorism is. We never did.

In 1962, Mandela left South Africa illegally to raise funds

and recruit fighters throughout Africa.

We made it clear that your object is military targets.

Part of my training was what they called demolition work.

I was expert...

in exploding bombs.

When Mandela returned to South Africa,

the intelligence services were on his trail.

On the road to Johannesburg, he was arrested

and charged with leaving the country without a passport.

SIREN BLARES

At his trial, Mandela denounced the proceedings against him,

saying he was a black man being wrongly tried in a white man's court

and he defiantly wore his traditional dress.

Found guilty, he was sentenced to five years in jail.

But the ANC continued their campaign.

A year later, at a farmhouse in Rivonia, near Johannesburg,

the entire top leadership was arrested.

Police found plans for sabotage

and guerrilla warfare which implicated Mandela.

He and his colleagues now faced serious charges

of plotting against the state.

If convicted, they faced the death penalty.

I said to our chaps,

"We are going to die in any case.

"Let's disappear under a cloud of glory.

"Let's show them that we can use their platform to fight them."

Facing the gallows,

Mandela turned the courtroom into a political platform

with a dramatic speech from the dock.

After an agonising three-week delay, the judge finally gave his verdict.

Right up to the time when the judge said,

"Stand up for your sentence," on 12 June 1964,

we expected the death sentence.

There was a collective sigh of relief

when he said, "Life imprisonment with hard labour."

I shall never lose hope and my people shall never lose hope.

In fact, we expect that the work will go on.

SHOUTING

The vast majority of the white people

expected the death sentence to be imposed

and they were disappointed that it was not.

What was their view of Mandela?

He was a terrorist.

If you asked ten white people

what was Mandela's occupation,

nine would not have known that he was an attorney.

He was just a black terrorist.

Mandela and his co-defendants were sent to Robben Island,

an isolated prison from which escape was impossible.

They had avoided the death penalty,

but faced an indeterminate sentence in jail.

Years after he was freed, we took Mandela

and his former colleague Kathrada back to Robben Island.

Which was mine, now? Number four. Here we are. Uh-huh.

Mandela's home measured 8ft by 7.

He slept on the floor and had a bucket,

known as a ballie, for a toilet.

Those are not the ballies we had, remember?

Our ballies were smaller. I see.

One of the things that is difficult for me to comprehend

is that we spent such a long time here.

Of course there were painful moments

because the apartheid regime was an expert

in persecuting people psychologically.

When we first arrived here,

the warders had been indoctrinated to believe these were subhuman.

They were trying to break us down, crush our spirits,

so that they could have a very subservient group of prisoners.

For 13 years, Mandela was given hard labour.

He was forced to quarry limestone.

Always defiant, he resisted attempts by the guards

to humiliate and bully him.

They use an expression which is used

when you are driving oxen.

In Afrikaans - haak.

Now, we resented that.

It was Nelson who said

"Comrades, let's be slower than ever."

It was clear, therefore,

that the steps we were taking would make it impossible

ever to reach the quarry where we were going to.

They were compelled to negotiate with Nelson.

MAN SPEAKS IN AFRIKAANS

TRANSLATION: You could definitely see that Nelson Mandela was the leader.

When he spoke to them,

they would stop, or work, or whatever he told them.

I watched Nelson Mandela for two hours, the way he was working.

It took him ten minutes to lift his pickaxe,

lift it from the ground above his head. Ten minutes!

I charged him and he was sentenced to only receiving rice water.

One of Mandela's heaviest burdens was being separated from Winnie.

She was my wife. I had two children with her. I loved her.

I thought about her very often, and that's reflected in my letters.

But private mail was another weapon used against the prisoners.

TRANSLATION: The head of the prison enforced the policy

that we should try to break the prisoners down by censoring letters.

We mixed up their correspondence,

so they lost contact with their families.

The prisoners knew we were burning letters

when they picked up the butts. They were very upset.

Family visits were severely restricted.

Winnie was only allowed to see Mandela every six months.

His two young daughters were refused permission to visit for ten years.

When his son was killed in a car crash, Mandela wasn't allowed

to the funeral, nor to his mother's when she died a year later.

Mandela had now been in jail for 12 years,

but the government had still not succeeded

in crushing black opposition.

In 1976, the black youths of a new generation

protested against apartheid on the streets of Soweto.

NEWS REPORT: What started as a peaceful protest,

degenerated into a rampage which left hundreds dead

and cost the country an estimated 50 million rand.

The young ringleaders were arrested and sent to Robben Island.

There they came face to face with Mandela

and the old guard of the ANC.

Mandela has been here with all these people.

Are they still the same?

That was the main question.

Are they as revolutionary as us?

Are they fighters? Is that spirit of freedom still alive?

The fire in their bellies, like us?

The newly arrived firebrands were gradually won round

by Walter Sisulu and Mandela,

who'd been elected leader of the ANC prisoners.

Were you proud to be chosen?

Proud, in the sense that that was an honour.

At the same time,

the impression that you are a demigod worried me.

I wanted to be regarded just like an ordinary human being,

with virtues and vices.

The ANC was still outlawed.

It was illegal even to publish its name or to refer to Mandela.

The government hoped that the memory of him would fade.

But his wife's defiance kept Mandela's name alive.

We are fighting for a South Africa...

..which can only be led by him.

He is the only hope for this country.

That lady made a massive contribution

towards the struggle.

There was one time

when she became almost the pillar of the organisation inside the country.

Outside South Africa, support for Mandela was growing.

Nelson Mandela had this almost mystical impact,

because of his power, because of his dignity,

and that transmitted itself

even from his incarceration in those cold cells

in Robben Island.

CHANTING AND SINGING

And it gradually seeped out into schoolchildren and communities.

By the mid-1980s, he had become this international figure.

He became a legend, increasingly,

so that you have roads named after him, student unions named after him.

PROTESTORS CHANT

He became the person who symbolised the freedom struggle.

Some of the strongest support for the anti-apartheid movement

came from Britain.

PROTESTORS SHOUT

Different interest groups in the United Kingdom

began to ask the question, what can we do?

And it became a classless thing.

It wasn't just trade unions. The civil society became

very, very conscious and, if you like, this particular blot

on the global landscape was everybody's business.

CHANTING: Victory to the ANC!

In South Africa, the white government stood firm,

ignoring protest and economic sanctions from around the world.

Mandela had been imprisoned for 20 years and there he would stay.

I have always been confident that we'd win, but there were times

when the apartheid regime appeared to be stronger...

and I had doubts.

SCREAMING

But the young black activists would not give in.

Their aim was to make South Africa ungovernable.

SCREAMING

With the country now on the verge of social and economic collapse,

the government needed to find a way out.

The South African President offered Mandela his freedom,

but with conditions attached.

I am prepared to release Mr Mandela,

if he would say that he rejects violence as a means to reach

and to achieve political ends.

Mandela's reply from prison was read out by his daughter at a rally

in Soweto - the first time he had been quoted in public for 20 years.

My father says, "I cannot and will not give any undertaking

"at a time when I and you, the people, are not free.

"Your freedom and mine cannot be separated."

CHEERING

"I will return. Amandla!"

CROWD RESPONDS

CHEERING

Mandela's uncompromising message was welcomed by the crowd.

Nothing less than full democracy was acceptable.

Around the world, calls for Mandela's release intensified.

In London, young people, many not born when Mandela

was last seen in public, joined in a celebration of his 70th birthday.

There was this huge feeling of support for Mandela.

You've got this real sense that this concert was being beamed

all over the world and somewhere in South Africa,

there were bootleg tapes being made

and he might see it at some point, and that was a very joyful thing.

This show is going out to 60 different countries.

That means at this moment in time, 200 million people are watching.

CHEERING

As the day progressed, you really felt

as if there was a massive change and understanding taking place.

It was a real point of arrival where young people said

this is not acceptable.

Thank you!

CHEERING

Our cause was now supported by the entire world

and apartheid South Africa was a polecat of the world.

It was completely isolated.

I want you to scream out loud and clear

five times - how long.

CROWD: How long? Again!

The following year, white South Africa elected a new President -

FW de Klerk.

He realised that Mandela held the key to any settlement.

Mandela had been moved to the comfort of a prison warder's house

near Cape Town.

De Klerk began secret talks with him

about a political settlement that would set him free.

But when ANC colleagues visited Mandela, they were suspicious.

When we reached the beautiful home,

this is not a prison.

Wine farming area,

swimming pool...

..microwaves, television sets...

I concluded he has sold us out.

The story went sweeping through the country

that Mandela was selling out.

You would hesitate to say it as a colleague of Mandela,

but lurking there

was the idea that when you are alone in a corner,

they have all the resources, they'll out...

They will bait you into a trap.

But Mandela did not sell out.

I was confident that when it came to argument,

that we want all the rights of citizenship in our country,

we're superior to them.

At times, there were about five of them, sometimes six,

but I was alone, so I had to prepare my case very well.

Mandela's demands were clear. Equal rights and equal votes for everyone.

His refusal to compromise gave the government no choice.

It became clear to me

that he has a pivotal role to play

and that he WAS playing it

irrespective of the fact that he was in jail.

I wish to put it plainly that the government has taken a firm decision

to release Mr Mandela unconditionally.

I am serious about bringing this matter to finality without delay.

February 11th 1990.

The world waited to see Mandela's face

for the first time in over a quarter of a century.

He had won his freedom on HIS terms.

NEWS REPORT: This is the hour. This is the hour the world has been waiting for.

With friends and family at his side, Mandela prepared to walk to freedom.

It was early on a Sunday morning

in Arkansas. I got my daughter up, took her down,

we turned on the television

and we watched him walk to freedom together.

I'll never forget it.

NEWS REPORT: There's Mr Mandela, Mr Nelson Mandela, a free man,

taking his first steps into a new South Africa.

NELSON MANDELA: 'When I saw that crowd,

'it aroused feelings of excitement

'I couldn't control, I couldn't describe.'

Nobody believed that they would ever live to see this day

and we all felt that we were part of this thing.

I felt that I was liberated.

I felt that I was free,

having seen this man, after so many years, free.

Mandela made his way to Cape Town,

where a huge crowd waited to hear him speak

for the first time as a free man.

Today, the majority of South Africans,

black and white,

recognise that apartheid has no future.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

CROWD SINGS: "NKOSI SIKELEL'I AFRIKA"

Mandela was at last reunited with his wife Winnie,

but it wasn't the happy homecoming he had longed for.

Winnie's defiant support of her husband had come at a price.

She too had been persecuted and imprisoned,

but her own wayward behaviour had lost her sympathy.

MEN CHANT

While Mandela was in jail,

Winnie had recruited a young gang to protect her.

They were known as the Mandela United Football Club.

They were implicated in the murder of a 14-year-old boy,

and Winnie was charged with kidnap and assault.

I feel sad about her

because there is so much that she did...

..and yet, when she stumbled,

and people tried, including Madiba, to give her that support,

she failed to respond.

CHEERING

Mandela stood by her during her trial

and she escaped with a suspended sentence,

but his loyalty was being sorely tested.

Winnie was having an affair, and there had been allegations

of other infidelities while he was in prison.

Two years after he left jail,

Mandela bowed to the inevitable.

We have mutually agreed

that a separation would be best for each one of us.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I hope you'll appreciate...

..the pain I have gone through.

ANGRY SHOUTING

Mandela's release

and the government's willingness to negotiate with him

triggered a power struggle between the ANC and a rival political group,

the Zulu Inkatha movement.

Violence between the two groups

threatened to destroy any hope of a peaceful settlement.

Mandela urged young ANC supporters to make peace.

Take your guns,

your knives and your pangas

and throw them into the sea.

JEERING

What was your reaction

when you heard your words just fall on such stony ground?

I was not surprised.

That's why I said, "If I am your leader, you have to listen to me

"and if you don't want to listen to me, then drop me as your leader."

Against this background of uncertainty,

negotiations began for the future of South Africa.

Mandela, once considered a terrorist, was now the peacemaker.

'The first meeting was very impressive.

'His statement there I will never forget.'

It was with no bitterness, no vengefulness,

not a sign of hatred.

At no stage did he endeavour to exploit

or use his 27 years in prison.

There was a statesman speaking as if he was never in prison.

Talks were painstakingly slow,

but an event outside the negotiating room

brought the urgency of the task into focus.

NEWS REPORT: The assassination of Chris Hani

has shocked South Africa and triggered fears

in a country where violence and retaliation are commonplace.

Chris Hani was one of the country's most popular black politicians.

His assassination by a white extremist

threatened to trigger all-out race war.

INDISTINCT SPEECH

An outburst of rioting and looting left 70 dead.

Only one man now had the authority to calm the country.

They saw the urgency of the situation.

I think everybody understood that this is it.

So there was no argument, and that evening

he entered the television station, for the first time live.

We are a nation in mourning.

Our pain and anger is real.

Yet we must not permit ourselves

to be provoked by those

who seek to deny us the very thing Chris Hani gave his life for.

This is the defining moment

when Nelson Mandela resumed the reins

because he had to rescue a terrible situation in the country.

In effect, Mandela became President on that day.

The negotiations for free elections took four years.

But for the first time, in April 1994,

black South Africans were given an equal vote with whites.

23 million people went to the polls.

We were turning a new page in the history of South Africa.

This was in my mind as I cast that ballot paper.

APPLAUSE

People can't believe it

when you say, "Hey! I'm free!

"I'm free!"

And you are walking tall.

And cloud nine -

well, that's too low.

The outcome of the election was never in doubt.

The ANC won power, Nelson Mandela was the new President

and the world came to the capital, Pretoria,

to pay tribute to the man who'd led South Africa out of its nightmare.

# Mandela!

# Mandela! #

I never imagined that the world would give us the support we enjoyed

and to be known as a miracle country,

I had never expected that,

but that gave us a lot of pride.

I, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela,

do hereby swear to be faithful to the Republic of South Africa.

The election of Mandela was not a magic wand that could be waved

to heal the wounds of old hatreds.

Mandela realised he had to reach out to the white minority

and he did so by embracing their powerful tribal symbol - rugby.

It was the World Cup final,

the South African Springboks against the New Zealand All Blacks.

CROWD: Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!

I went round the stadium.

I did not expect such an ovation.

A momentous occasion, unbelievable occasion

and there was Madiba wearing a Springbok jumper.

I thought, "Wow!" And in his very calm, collected way, sincere way,

he wished the guys well.

Then he turned around

and when he turned around, I saw it was my number

and I was just, that's it, you know, I was ready to run through anything

and do whatever's necessary to win this game.

CROWD: Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!

Any other president in the world would have worn his best suit.

Here comes a guy that was incarcerated

supporting a white man's game,

wearing a white man's jumper. Incredible.

ALL SING: "NKOSI SIKELEL'I AFRIKA"

I couldn't sing. I was biting my lower lip

because I knew if I opened my mouth, I would start to cry.

I was just so proud, unbelievably proud.

In the closing minutes, the Springboks scored a drop goal

and won the match and, with it, the World Cup.

It wasn't a victory for white South Africa.

This was a victory for all of South Africa

and he was there, sharing it with us.

Let's follow the detractors' route

and say, "It was a very shrewd political move." OK, fine.

But the way in which he carried that political move was just tremendous.

CROWD CHEERS

TRANSLATION: If they can just show us the bones of my child,

I will be grateful.

Where did they leave the bones of my child?

Where did they take him?

The toughest challenge Mandela faced

was to persuade South Africa to forget the horrors of the past

and not seek revenge. At public hearings,

victims were encouraged to confront their aggressors,

who escaped prosecution if they confessed.

TRANSLATION: He took my genitals

and Mr X shut the drawer.

He squeezed and squeezed.

What kind of man, listening to those moans and cries and groans,

and taking each of those people very near to their deaths,

what kind of man is that?

Not only you have asked me that question.

If we don't forgive them,

then that feeling of bitterness and revenge will be there

and we are saying, "Let us forget the past.

"Let's concern ourselves with the present and the future, but to say

"the atrocities of the past will never be allowed to happen again."

My wife was sitting right at the door where you came in.

VOICE BREAKING: She was wearing a long blue coat.

Can you remember if you shot her?

When he says, "Guys, we've got to forgive,"

nobody could say, "You are being facile,

"you are talking glibly about forgiveness.

"What do you know about suffering?" 27 years, you know.

TRANSLATION: We are sorry...

..for what we have done.

It was the situation in South Africa.

BILL CLINTON: He did something almost historically unique...

We are asking from you,

please do forgive us.

..which raised the prospect that people could be held accountable

without being punished in a traditional sense.

This is something virtually without precedent in humanity.

..two...three!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

On his 80th birthday,

Mandela married once more.

His third wife was Graca Machel,

widow of the President of Mozambique,

who'd died 12 years earlier.

The beginning of our closeness, if I can say,

it was two people

who had been very hurt by life.

That sense of being lonely

and trying to find answers for a very deep sense of pain and loss,

I think that's what sparked our connection.

One, two, three!

Take off your shoes and your skirt and go and jump with them!

LAUGHTER

Between them, Nelson and Graca had 45 grandchildren

and great-grandchildren.

Madiba had very little of family life before.

He was married, he had children,

but because of his obligations,

he never had time to have a normal family life.

It was that possibility again

of him regaining a family

and the space where you take away all your defences

and you are just a human being.

# Nelson Mandela

# Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela... #

At the end of his five-year term as President,

Mandela kept his promise to step down,

but had no intention of leaving the stage.

I'll have to get you the Sowetan. Oh, I see. I'll get it now.

Retirement didn't change the hectic pace of his life.

You'll get me these people too, you know, get all those. Yeah.

And then I would like to speak to the Pope

and then to President Putin

and then Sukarnoputri. OK.

MUSIC AND CHEERING

He used his pulling power with world leaders and celebrities

to raise millions for children, education

and AIDS - an issue which

he had been criticised for ignoring while President.

He established a charity to help fight the disease,

which claims hundreds of lives every day in South Africa.

He called it after his prison number - 46664.

A silent serial killer stalks the land.

Mandela was no longer President

and now we're looking at an elderly statesman

who had realised that the HIV/AIDS pandemic was ravaging the country

and the message was no longer about apartheid, obviously.

The message was that a genocide was taking place in his country.

Mandela's global campaign was brought home to him personally

when Makgatho, his only surviving son, died of AIDS in 2005.

Mandela chose to speak publicly about the cause of his death.

It gives a very bad reflection indeed to the members of the family

that they themselves should not come out and say bravely

that a member of my family has died of AIDS.

That's why we took the initiative

to say a member of our family has died -

in this particular case, my son.

I was the one who told my dad about Gatho's condition, you know.

And I know the day that I told him, how he reacted,

you know, like any other normal parent would react.

It was not an easy thing for him to accept.

I think for him, who has been a role model, you know,

in this country in many, many spheres,

it was important for him to come out and say,

"Look, my son also had HIV, lived through HIV and died."

Mandela lent his support to other campaigns.

On a winter's day, he came to London

to ask a crowd of 20,000 to make poverty history.

APPLAUSE

He's hugely personable.

He holds your hand, he just beams and lights up.

He is properly the real deal

and you sort of think, "Oh, my God, it's Mandela,"

and you remember all his life,

and then you meet him and it's that, plus.

As long as poverty, injustice

and gross inequality persist in our world,

none of us can truly rest.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen, Nelson Mandela!

Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert in Hyde Park

was his last visit to London.

THEY SING: "Free Nelson Mandela"

The famous anthem of 20 years earlier was sung in tribute.

# Freedom!

# Free Nelson Mandela

# Freedom

# Free Nelson Mandela

# Freedom!

# Free Nelson Mandela! #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

His legacy is himself. He was a huge influence on the world.

To see the terrible regime of apartheid be dismantled

is an extraordinary testament to his tenacity and his strength.

He taught us something about peace and reconciliation

in stoically enduring 27 years of imprisonment and abuse

and coming out on the other side of it without rancour or bitterness

and asking people to put their anger behind.

People need symbols.

People need inspiration.

What was he looking for? He's looking for freedom -

not for himself.

It is freedom for all of these others.

After nearly 90 years of life,

it is time for new hands to lift the burdens.

It is in your hands now.

I thank you.

At the closing ceremony of the 2010 Football World Cup,

with his wife Graca at his side,

Nelson Mandela made one of his last public appearances.

85,000 spectators rose to their feet

to welcome Madiba, the father of their nation,

a man who'd sacrificed his liberty for their freedom.

If I had to live again, I would do exactly the same thing.

As long as our people are oppressed

and deprived of everything to make human beings happy and to enjoy life,

it was my duty to be involved

and I would do it over and over again.

My family was here

and I would like to be buried here, at home.

But I don't want to take long about death, and so on.

OK!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd