In the 1940s, Nelson Mandela was one of thousands of blacks who flocked to Johannesburg in search of work. A new political party came into power with a new idea: the separation of whites and blacks. Apartheid was born, and along with it a half-century of struggle to achieve democracy in South Africa.

"Where you lived, how you lived, what educational system you were going to go through, the type of jobs you got, where you were going to be buried — everything from birth to death was determined after the apartheid government came into power."
— Sonny Venkatrathnam, political prisoner

In 1960, with the African National Congress banned, the movement went underground. Faced with increased government crackdown, Mandela launched Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a military wing of the ANC, and the armed struggle began. Two years later, he was arrested and charged with high treason. Mandela and eight others are sentenced to life in prison.

"We used to sing a song , "One stick, two...sticks of dynamite. We'll take the country the Castro way." Castro's campaign was very short. Within a space of two years they had overrun Cuba. So here we were singing this song. As if to say in six month's time we would be free. In six month's time we were languishing in prison."
—Mac Maharaj, MK member and political prisoner

While Mandela and other political leaders languished in prison, the government cracked down. It seemed that resistance to apartheid had been crushed. But on June 16, 1976, a student uprising in Soweto sparked a new generation of activism.

"I’ve never seen that many police. I mean, this is a group of kids with shining black shoes, white socks and little tunics singing freedom songs. We actually looked cute! It’s unbelievable to think that anyone could have stood firm on their feet and actually shot into that crowd."
— Bongi Mkhabela, student organizer

Guerilla soldiers on the border, unrest in the townships, striking workers, and a wave of international attention were making South Africa's system of apartheid unworkable. Something had to give. And it happened on Feb. 2, 1990 when South Africa's president, F.W. De Klerk announced that the ANC would be unbanned and that Nelson Mandela would be freed after 27 years in prison.

"When F.W. De Klerk made that speech he did not believe he was handing the country over to the ANC. They thought that if you release Mandela, who had become a icon in prison, a living martyr, if you released him, he would quickly be shown to be fallable, old, out of touch. Demythologized was the word they used. And all this was wrong. "
— Allister Sparks, journalist

On April 27, 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa's first black president. But it didn't come easy. The four years between Nelson Mandela's release and the transition to democracy were some of the most volatile and painful in the country's history.

"Not in my wildest dreams had I thought I would live to see that moment. There we were, streaming into these buildings that for so many years were the place where they passed laws meant to humiliate us. And here we were now, all these "terrorists" as regarded by the apartheid government."
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu
on Mandela's inauguration.

The song used in the end of every story is called Welele (sung in Xhosa)

Translation:
Mandela don't let the whites undermine us. Help! People are dying. We sleep in the mountains.

Performed by Sechaba, Zambia

This version is from an old cassette we found at the Mayibuye Oral History Center in Cape Town, South Africa.

Another version of the song can be found on a CD called "Freedom Songs".