decades. and so the image, the free nelson mandela image, was always him as a young man in his 40s, as he had been when he d been locked away, even as he aged decade after decade in prison. he served 27 years in prison, 18 of them at hard labor in that island cell before south africa was finally ready to give up apartness, to give up apartheid. and when fw clark was collected president of south african in 1989, it was essentially no relent. to finally, at least, start to give up the arcane and brutal racial system that south africa invented, it s hard to remember, but really, invented after world war ii, after hitler, and that they fought for for 50 years against the people that they subsu subjugated with that system. fw clark unbanned the organization. and in february of 1990, he visited then 70-year-old nelson