Mandela: Why He Had To Be President

When Mandela was thrown into jail in the early 1960s, just as Kenya was preparing for independence, South Africans didn’t forget that he was their leader. All through his 27 years of incarceration, a majority of South Africans were unanimous on who their leader was. That is why, when Mandela was released from prison on February 11th 1990, those who had kept the freedom struggle going, whether from home or abroad, the likes of Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Winnie Mandela, Govan Mbeki (the father of Thabo Mbeki, who was released from prison three years before Mandela), among others, gave way for Mandela to eventually become the first indigenous African president of South Africa in 1994 – Mandela was 76 then.
For all his troubles, the anti-apartheid movement felt that it was important to have Mandela take the lead. Anything else would have been like visiting a curse upon themselves.