‘Once, Mandela was seen as the devil incarnate’: the TV show laying bare the true struggle against apartheid
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Free Nelson Mandela is a Channel 4 documentary series that chronicles the three‑decade anti‑apartheid campaign up to Nelson Mandela’s 1990 release and his 1994 election as South Africa’s president.
- Peter Hain recounts being vilified, targeted with a letter bomb and framed for a bank theft, and notes that Mandela was once labeled “the devil incarnate” by Margaret Thatcher.
- Dali Tambo describes his family’s experience of constant surveillance in London, including Algerian embassy bug‑sweeps that “found them two out of three times” and a violent encounter with a man hiding in his school cellar.
- British anti‑apartheid movement organized high‑profile protests that halted the 1969 Springbok rugby tour of Britain and Ireland and forced the cancellation of the 1970 South African cricket tour.
- Artists Against Apartheid was founded in 1986 by Dali Tambo and Jerry Dammers, staging massive concerts such as the June 1986 Clapham Common rally and the 1988 Wembley Stadium show that reached an estimated 600 million viewers.
- Nelson Mandela after his 1990 release was escorted by Peter Hain to the 2000 Labour Party conference, where his personal attention to Hain’s mother highlighted his reputation as a “people’s person.”
- Channel 4 will broadcast the documentary on 14 June at 9 pm.
Why it matters: The film gives British audiences a detailed view of the anti‑apartheid struggle, spotlighting activists like Hain and Tambo and the impact of sports and music boycotts, thereby reshaping public memory of the era and offering a template for modern protest movements.
