Mandela walks out of Victor Verster

Victor Verster Prison, Paarl · Paarl, South Africa · 1990-02-11

On 11 February 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster prison near Paarl hand in hand with Winnie Mandela, in front of the world's cameras, and spoke that evening from the balcony of Cape Town City Hall. A bronze statue stands at the prison gate, on the spot of his first free steps.

The record

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.

• Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
• The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
• Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
• National and municipal archives of South Africa, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

Films are matched to this event editorially or by search; if one is wrong, tell us and we will replace it.