#mandela

‘Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld… The time for the healing of wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.’ – Nelson Mandela, from his inaugural speech as President of South Africa in 1994.

The man who was once the South African government’s number one enemy, imprisoned for 27 years, was now its first democratically elected president, appearing on the ballot paper alongside 18 other candidates. He was the leader of the African National Congress party, the most influential of the opposition groups in bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa.

During apartheid, many groups outside South Africa produced political art to raise awareness of apartheid and to promote the fight against it. Through badges, t-shirts and posters the outside world came to know the faces of political prisoners such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu.

The badges here represent the British-based Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), one of the most influential of the campaign groups. It was formed as the Boycott Movement in 1959 by a group of South African exiles and British opponents to apartheid and changed its name the following year. Other badges refer to SWAPO (South West African Peoples Organisation), an armed movement fighting for Namibian independence from South Africa.

See how Mandela’s inspirational story helped shape the history of his nation in our special exhibitionSouth Africa: the art of a nation (27 October 2016 – 26 February 2017). 

Nelson Mandela badge. UK, c. 1984.

Nelson Mandela badge. South Africa, 1994.

Anti-apartheid badges, 1984–1987. Mixed media.

Deaths Mandela

My deepest, darkest secret is that when I’m reciting Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, I pronounce “bludgeonings” as “bologna”.

That’s a bullshit word, don’t you try and tell me–