It was a day I thought I would never see. Having spent my youth as a sporadically active anti-apartheidist (I was deported from South Africa in the mid 1970s) not in my wildest dreams did I think I would witness Mandela walking free.
I did, and thus proved that predicting the ebb and flow of African politics was a mug's game.
In the four years between that famous day and Mandela's swearing in as South Africa's first democratically elected president I was equally certain a peaceful outcome was impossible. The smell of cordite hung in the air, Zulus were threatening to engage in civil war with Xhosas, and white Afrikaner hard-liners were threatening to blow the seemingly endless constitutional talks to smithereens.
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