ABSTRACT
These words from the Freedom Charter, fIrst adopted by the African National Congress (ANC) in 1955, stood for decades as the moral compass for opposition to apartheid South Africa.2 This opposition, in many cases forced by domestic oppression to flee abroad, became by the 1980s a cause celebre for civil rights activists around the world. Indeed, few events in modern history resonate with as much force as the release of Nelson Mandela from jail in February 1990. For Mandela, it was another step on a personal odyssey that took him from freedom fIghter to prisoner and fInally to the presidency. For many other black South Africans, Mandela's release represented a turning point in a longer struggle against oppression, one with its origins in colonialism and which became institutionalized after the Union of South Africa in 1910, a struggle which was to grow in intensity under the successive apartheid governments ofthe post-war period.
