Nelson Mandela's release inventory
(Image: Nelson Mandela Foundation)February 11, 2011 — Today marks the 21st anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. How did he start his first day of freedom on February 12, 1990, as a guest at Archbishop Tutu’s house in Cape Town?
By getting up at 4am to do his morning exercises.
As is shown in the inventory of items he took with him from Victor Verster Prison, Mandela had a set of three exercise weights (“1 stel gewigte”).
Trevor Manuel’s biographer Pippa Green takes up the story: “After nearly 48 hours without sleep, (Trevor Manuel) collapsed into bed at around midnight ... only to be awoken at 4am by a phone call from Mandela. ‘Trevor, where are my weights?’ asked the old man.
“They had been packed into one of the vehicles that had left Victor Verster prison the day before. Manuel tracked them down before driving Mandela to the airport that afternoon to see him off on his homeward journey to Johannesburg.” – Pippa Green, Choice not Fate (Penguin, 2008), page 315.