Basquiat secret "Sotheby's Finds Hidden Signature On Basquiat Work"

   LONDON — Thirty years ago, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat secretly signed one of his paintings in invisible ink, says Sotheby's auction house, which discovered the hidden autograph as it was preparing the painting for sale.

   Sotheby's experts uncovered the secret this month as they were examining "Orange Sports Figure," which goes on sale Wednesday. The vibrant image of an abstract crowned figure is estimated to be worth between 3 million pounds and 4 million pounds ($4.7 million and $6.3 million).

   Basquiat, a graffiti artist who became a 1980s art star, signed relatively few of his canvasses. But Sotheby's said ultraviolet light revealed the artist's name and the date 1982 beneath the work's layers of acrylic and spray paint.

   " The signature just popped out," Cheyenne Westphal, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's Europe, said Tuesday.

   She said staff were initially "surprised, astonished and puzzled" by the signature, which appears to have been written in the type of pen used to mark banknotes.

   "Nobody else probably ever knew about this invisible inscription, and the prospect that he might have left other invisible writings on his canvasses that are only visible under ultraviolet light is very exciting," she said.

   Westphal said she knew of no other invisible signature on a Basquiat work.

   Basquiat's paintings are often covered in words and doodles. He signed some paintings with a crown, others with his graffiti alter ego SAMO – but relatively few with his full name.

   The son of a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Brooklyn-raised Basquiat developed a vibrant style influenced by Picasso and the Abstract Expressionists as well as by the work of street graffiti artists.

   His works celebrate icons of black culture, from athletes like Muhammad Ali and Hank Aaron to musicians like Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, and often allude to the legacy of slavery and colonialism.

   Basquiat's reputation has soared since his death from a drug overdose in 1988 at the age of 27. "Untitled" sold for $14.6 million at Sotheby's in 2007, and "Untitled (Boxer)" sold for $13.5 million in New York in 2008.

   "Orange Sports Figure" is part of Sotheby's contemporary art sale in London on Wednesday.

    Westphal said the auction house had not revised the work's estimated sale price in light of the discovery.

little story about Jean-Michel Basquiat

"I am not a black artist, I am an artist" -Basquiat

SYNOPSIS 

      Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York. He first attracted attention for his graffiti under the name "SAMO" in New York City. He sold sweatshirts and postcards featuring his artwork on the streets before his painting career took off. He collaborated with Andy Warhol in the mid-1980s, which resulted in a show of their work. Basquiat died on August 12, 1988, in New York City.

Early Years

   Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 22, 1960. With a Haitian-American father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat's diverse cultural heritage was one of his many sources of inspiration.

   A self-taught artist, Basquiat began drawing at an early age on sheets of paper his father, an accountant, brought home from the office. As he delved deeper into his creative side, his mother strongly encouraged to pursue artistic talents.

   Basquiat first attracted attention for his graffiti in New York City in the late 1970s, under the name "SAMO." Working with a close friend, he tagged subway trains and Manhattan buildings with cryptic aphorisms.

   In 1977, Basquiat quit high school a year before he was slated to graduate. To make ends meet, he sold sweatshirts and postcards featuring his artwork on the streets of his native New York.

Commercial Success

   Three years of struggle gave way to fame in 1980, when his work was featured in a group show. His work and style received critical acclaim for the fusion of words, symbols, stick figures, and animals. Soon, his paintings came to be adored by an art loving public that had no problem paying as much as $50,000 for a Basquiat original.

   His rise coincided with the emergence of a new art movement, Neo-Expressionism, ushering in a wave of new, young and experimental artists that included Julian Schnabel and Susan Rothenberg.

   In the mid 1980s, Basquiat collaborated with famed pop artist Andy Warhol, which resulted in a show of their work that featured a series of corporate logos and cartoon characters.

   On his own, Basquiat continued to exhibit around the country and the world. In 1986, he traveled to Africa for a show in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. That same year, the 25-year-old exhibited nearly 60 paintings at the Kestner-Gesellschaft Gallery in Hanover, Germany—becoming the youngest artist to ever showcase his work there.

Personal Problems

   As his popularity soared, so did Basquiat's personal problems. By the mid-1980s, friends became increasingly concerned by his excessive drug use. He became paranoid and isolated himself from the world around him for long strethes. Desperate to kick a heroin addiction, he left New York for Hawaii in 1988, returning a few months later and claiming to be sober.

   Sadly, he wasn't. Basquiat died of a drug overdose on August 12, 1988, in New York City. He was 27 years old. Although his art career was brief, Jean-Michel Basquiat has been credited with bringing the African-American and Latino experience in the elite art world.

basquiat.com

QUICK FACTS

• NAME: Jean-Michel Basquiat
• OCCUPATION: Painter
• BIRTH DATE: December 22, 1960
• DEATH DATE: August 12, 1988
• PLACE OF BIRTH: Brooklyn, New York
• PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York
• FULL NAME: Jean-Michel Basquiat
• NICKNAME: "SAMO"

NAZI Secret Weapons NAZI Secret Experiments, Weapons, War Technology Reported in Harper's Magazine

NAZI Secret Weapons
"NAZI Secret Experiments, Weapons, War Technology
Reported in Harper's Magazine"

            Someone wrote to Wright Field recently, saying he understood this country had got together quite a collection of enemy war secrets, that many were now on public sale, and could he, please, be sent everything on German jet engines. The Air Documents Division of 'the Army Air Forces' answered: "Sorry – but that would be fifty tons." Moreover, that fifty tons was just a small portion of what is today undoubtedly the biggest collection of captured enemy war secrets ever assembled.

            It may interest you to learn that the war secrets in this collection run into the thousands, that the mass of documents is mountainous, and that there has never before been anything quite comparable to it. Wright Field is working from a documents "mother lode" of fifteen hundred tons. In Washington, the Office of Technical Services ... reports that tens of thousands of tons of material are involved. It is estimated that over a million separate items must be handled, and that they, very likely, contain practically all the scientific, industrial, and military secrets of Germany.

            How the collection came to be goes back, for beginnings, to one day in 1944 when the Allied Combined Chief' of Staff set in motion a colossal search for war secrets in occupied German territory. They created a group of military-civilian teams, termed the Joint Intelligence Objectives Committee, which was to follow the invading armies into Germany and uncover all her military, scientific, and industrial secrets for early use against Japan.

            What did we find? You'd like some outstanding examples from the war secrets collection? The head of the communications unit of Technical Industrial Intelligence Branch [TIIB] opened his desk drawer and took out the tiniest vacuum tube I had ever seen. It was about half thumb-size. "Notice it is heavy porcelain – not glass – and thus virtually indestructible. It is a thousand watt – one-tenth the size of similar American tube. Today our manufacturers know the secret of making it.

He [also] showed me then what had been two of the most closely-guarded technical secrets of the war: the infra-red device which the Germans invented for seeing at night, and the remarkable diminutive generator which operated it. The diminutive generator – five inches across – stepped up current from an ordinary flashlight battery to 15,000 volts. It had a walnut-sized motor which spun a rotor at 10,000 rpm. The generator then ran 3,000 hours!

            "You see this..." the head of Communications Unit, TIIB, said to me. It was metal, and looked like a complicated doll's house with the roof off. "It is the chassis or frame, for a radio. To make the same thing, Americans would machine cut, hollow, shape, fit – a dozen different processes. This is done on a press in one operation. It is called the 'cold extrusion' process. We do it with some soft, splattery metals. But by this process the Germans do it with cold steel! Thousands of parts now made as castings or drop forgings or from malleable iron can now be made this way. The production speed increase is a little matter of one thousand per cent."

            But of all the industrial secrets, perhaps, the biggest windfall came from the laboratories and plants of the great German cartel, I. G. Farbenindustrie. Never before, it is claimed, was there such a store-house of secret information. It covers liquid and solid fuels, metallurgy, synthetic rubber, textiles, chemicals, plastics, drugs, dyes. One American dye authority declares: "It includes the production know-how and the secret formulas for over fifty thousand dyes. Many of them are faster and better than ours. Many are colors we were never able to make. The American dye industry will be advanced at least ten years."

            In matters of food, medicine, and branches of the military art the finds of the search teams were no less impressive. Perhaps one of the most exciting searches was also the grimmest. This was the hunt for hidden documents which might reveal that Nazi scientists had frozen human beings to death and then tried to bring them back to life again. Victims had been immersed naked in ice water until they lost consciousness. All the time elaborate testings were constantly made. Seven subjects were chilled to death beyond revival in from fifty-three to one hundred and six minutes.

            "As for medical secrets in this collection," one Army-surgeon has remarked, "some of them will save American medicine years of research; some of them are revolutionary – like, for instance, the German technique for treatment after prolonged and usually fatal exposure to cold." This discovery ... reversed everything medical science thought about the subject. In every one of the dread experiments the subjects were most successfully revived, both temporarily and permanently, by immediate immersion in hot water. In two cases of complete standstill of heart and cessation of respiration, a hot bath at 122 degrees brought both subjects back to life.

            Positively ionized air was discovered to have deleterious effects upon human well-being, and to account for the discomfort and depression felt at times when the barometer is falling. In many persons, it was found, its presence brought on asthma, hay fever, and nervous tension. It raised high blood pressure, sometimes to the danger point. It would bring on the symptoms common in mountain sickness – labored and rapid breathing, dizziness, fatigue, sleepiness. Negatively ionized air, however, did all the opposite. It was exhilarating, creating a feeling of high spirits and well-being. Mental depression was wiped out by it.

            And in aeronautics and guided missiles [the secrets] proved to be downright alarming. "The V-2 rocket, which bombed London," an Army Air Force publication reports, "was just a toy compared to what the Germans had up their sleeve."

            When the war ended, we now know, they had 138 types of guided missiles in various stages of production or development, using every known kind of remote control and fuse: radio, radar, wire, continuous wave, acoustics, infra-red, light beams, and magnetics, to name some; and for power, all methods of jet propulsion for either subsonic or supersonic speeds. Jet propulsion had even been applied to helicopter flight. Little wonder, then, that today Army Air Force experts declare publicly that in rocket power and guided missiles the Nazis were ahead of us by at least ten years.

            For the release and dissemination of all these one-time secrets the Office of the Publication Board was established by an order of President Truman within ten days after Japan surrendered. Today translators and abstracters of the Office of Technical Services [OTS], successor to the OPB, are processing them at the rate of about a thousand a week. The order directed that not only enemy war secrets should be published, but also (with some exceptions) all American secrets, scientific and technical, of all government war boards.

            And is the public doing anything with these one-time war secrets? It is eating them up. As many as twenty thousand orders have been filled in a month, and the order rate is now a thousand items a day. Scientists and engineers declare that the information is "cutting years from the time we would devote to problems already scientifically investigated."

            Company executives practically park on the OTS's front doorstep, wanting to be first to get hold of a particular report on publication. Some information is so valuable that to get it a single day ahead of a competitor, may be worth thousands of dollars. A research head of another business firm took notes for three hours in the OTS offices one day. "Thanks very much," he said, as he stood to go, "the notes from these documents are worth at least half a million dollars to my company."

Secrets by the Thousands

By C. Lester Walker

ADOLF HITLER IN NAZI ART (The art who dedicate to Adolf Hitler) : From the collection of "Adolf Hitler"

"EVERY 'THINK' IS ART"

Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities; this article focuses primarily on the visual arts, which includes the creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. But in here i just wanna talk about the ADOLF HITLER PAINTING (The art who dedicate to Adolf Hitler) : From the collection of "hitler".

Adolf Hitler (German ; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party(German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP); National Socialist German Workers Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler was at the centre of Nazi Germany, World War II in Europe, and the Holocaust.

Hitler was a decorated veteran of World War I. He joined the German Workers' Party (precursor of the NSDAP) in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état in Munich, known as the Beer Hall Putsch. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocraticideology of Nazism.

  Hitler knew the importance of his image. Photographs of him could be released only with his personal approval. Art was even more carefully watched. Here I provide examples of Hitler portraits taken from Die Kunst im deutschen Reich, the Nazi Party’s art magazine, and several other sources. Published by the Zentralverlag der NSDAP, it was a prestige magazine, printed on excellent paper and with high quality reproductions. There was also a profusion of busts and posters portraying Hitler. When the magazine carried a Hitler portrait, it was often the front piece.. Here you are;

1. This widely distributed print by Hoyer was titled “In the Beginning was the Word,” a clear reference to the opening of the biblical Gospel of John.

2. This rather striking drawing is by H. Oloffs, based on a Hoffmann photograph, and is the frontpiece to Hans Heinz Mantau-Sadila, Deutsche Führer Deutsches Schicksal: Das Buch der Künder und Führer des dritten Reiches (Berlin: Verlag und Versand für Deutsche Literatur Hans Eugen Hummel, 1934),

3. This widely distributed 1935 portrait is by Heinrich Knirr.

4. This painting hung in a memorial museum of Nazi history in Buchholz, a town near Hannover. The artist, about whom I know nothing, is listed as Professor Schmidt-Weimar.

5. This is an example of the mass-produced Hitler pictures that people could hang in their homes.

6. This portrait by K. I. Böhringer is taken from the September 1936 issue of Der Schulungsbrief, the Nazi monthly for political education.

7. This is another portrait by Heinrich Knirr. It was on exhibit at the Greater German Art Exhibition in 1937. The image comes from Die Kunst im Dritten Reich, October 1937.

8. This portrait is from a 1937 issue of the Nazi women's magazine, the N.S. Frauenwarte (#22, 1936/37).

9. A visitor to the site provided me with this remarkable portrait. Her father was based near Munich during the occupation and went into the beer hall where many of Hitler’s early meetings were held. She provides this background story: “The building had been bombed with the roof missing, but on one wall     behind the podium where Hitler had spoken was this painting. For some unknown reason, this poor farm boy from Oklahoma took a liking to it, so he took it out of the frame and rolled it up and brought it back in a map case. It is an oil painting on canvas and measures 4'2" x 2'4".”

 I know nothing about the artist (F. Thiele). If you have further information. kindly let me know.

10. This Franz Triebsch portrait is taken from the Deutsche Illustrierte Zeitung, #16/1939.

11. This portrait is also from the Deutsche Illustrierte Zeitung,#16/1939, by an unidentified artist. Hitler is greeting the troops.

12. This 1940 comes from the Nazi illustrated weekly, theIllustrierter Beobachter. It was published just after the German victory in Norway. I can’t quite decipher the artist.

13. This 1940 portrait is by Conrad Hommel.

14. A 1941 portrait by Otto von Kursell.

15. Another 1941 portrait, this one by Franz Triebsch.

16. This portrait was on the cover of the Illustrierter Beobachter,#16/1941 — the issue on Hitler's birthday. No artist is given.

17. This one is from the Greater German Art Exhibition of 1942. The artist is Rudolf Gerhard Zill. The illustration is from Der Schulungsbrief (#11/12 1942).

18. A 1942 portrait by Hans Schachinger.

19. There was a major industry producing busts of Hitler. This one is by Johann Friedrich Rogge.

20. Hitler’s image showed up in many places. Here, he is on the cover of a matchbook commemorating the Nuremberg party rally. This image is slightly enlarged.

HITLER SPEECH 

Biography "Nelson Mandela"

“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Biography

Nelson Mandela

“Former President of South Africa”

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. Wikipedia

  Born: July 18, 1918, Mvezo, South Africa

  Died: December 5, 2013, Houghton Estate, South Africa

  Movies: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

  Spouse: Graça Machel (m. 1998–2013), More

  Children: Makaziwe Mandela, Makgatho Mandela, Madiba Thembekile Mandela, Zenani Mandela, Zindziswa Mandela

  Awards: Nobel Peace Prize, Bharat Ratna, Time's Person of the Year,Sakharov

Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal, Arthur Ashe Courage Award, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Gandhi Peace Prize, Philadelphia Liberty Medal,Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding, Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal, Lenin Peace Prize, Nishan-e-Pakistan, Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights,Ambassador of Conscience Award, International Simón Bolívar Prize,United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights, Order of the Nile,World Citizenship Award, U Thant Peace Award, Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize, Indira Gandhi Award for International Justice and Harmony, Isitwalandwe Medal, Freedom of the City of Aberdeen,Bruno Kreisky Award, Carter–Menil Human Rights Prize, Bishop John T. Walker Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award, Giuseppe Motta Medal, Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize, J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, W E B DuBois International Medal, Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation, Harvard Business School Statesman of the Year Award

  

Rolihlahla Mandela was born into the Madiba clan in Mvezo, Transkei, on July 18, 1918, to Nonqaphi Nosekeni and Nkosi Mphakanyiswa Gadla Mandela, principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people, Jongintaba Dalindyebo.

His father died when he was 12 years old and the young Rolihlahla became a ward of Jongintaba at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni. Hearing the elder’s stories of his ancestor’s valour during the wars of resistance, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom struggle of his people.

He attended primary school in Qunu where his teacher Miss Mdingane gave him the name Nelson, in accordance with the custom to give all school children “Christian” names.

He completed his Junior Certificate at Clarkebury Boarding Institute and went on to Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of some repute, where he matriculated.

Nelson Mandela began his studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University College of Fort Hare but did not complete the degree there as he was expelled for joining in a student protest.

He completed his BA through the University of South Africa and went back to Fort Hare for his graduation in 1943.

On his return to the Great Place at Mqhekezweni the King was furious and said if he didn’t return to Fort Hare he would arrange wives for him and his cousin Justice. They ran away to Johannesburg instead, arriving there in 1941. There he worked as a mine security officer and after meeting Walter Sisulu, an estate agent, who introduced him to Lazar Sidelsky. He then did his articles through a firm of attorneys, Witkin Eidelman and Sidelsky.

Meanwhile he began studying for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand. By his own admission he was a poor student and left the university in 1952 without graduating. He only started studying again through the University of London after his imprisonment in 1962 but also did not complete that degree.

In 1989, while in the last months of his imprisonment, he obtained an LLB through the University of South Africa. He graduated in absentia at a ceremony in Cape Town.

Nelson Mandela, while increasingly politically involved from 1942, only joined the African National Congress in 1944 when he helped to form the ANC Youth League.

In 1944 he married Walter Sisulu’s cousin Evelyn Mase, a nurse. They had two sons, Madiba Thembekile ‘Thembi’ and Makgatho and two daughters both called Makaziwe, the first of whom died in infancy. They effectively separated in 1955 and divorced in 1958.

Nelson Mandela rose through the ranks of the ANCYL and through its work, in 1949 the ANC adopted a more radical mass-based policy, the Programme of Action.

In 1952 he was chosen at the National Volunteer-in-Chief of the Defiance Campaign with Maulvi Cachalia as his deputy. This campaign of civil disobedience against six unjust laws was a joint programme between the ANC and the South African Indian Congress. He and 19 others were charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for their part in the campaign and sentenced to nine months hard labour, suspended for two years.

A two-year diploma in law on top of his BA allowed Nelson Mandela to practice law, and in August 1952 he and Oliver Tambo established South Africa’s first black law firm, Mandela and Tambo.

At the end of 1952 he was banned for the first time. As a restricted person he was only permitted to watch in secret as the Freedom Charter was adopted in Kliptown on 26 June 1955.

Nelson Mandela was arrested in a countrywide police swoop on 5 December 1955, which led to the 1956 Treason Trial. Men and women of all races found themselves in the dock in the marathon trial that only ended when the last 28 accused, including Mr Mandela were acquitted on 29 March 1961.

On 21 March 1960 police killed 69 unarmed people in a protest against the pass laws held at Sharpeville. This led to the country’s first state of emergency and the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress on 8 April. Nelson Mandela and his colleagues in the Treason Trial were among thousands detained during the state of emergency.

During the trial on 14 June 1958 Nelson Mandela married a social worker, Winnie Madikizela. They had two daughters, Zenani and Zindziswa. The couple divorced in 1996.

Days before the end of the Treason Trial Nelson Mandela travelled to Pietermaritzburg to speak at the All-in Africa Conference, which resolved that he should write to Prime Minister Verwoerd requesting a non-racial national convention, and to warn that should he not agree there would be a national strike against South Africa becoming a republic. As soon as he and his colleagues were acquitted in the Treason Trial Nelson Mandela went underground and began planning a national strike for 29, 30 and 31 March. In the face of massive mobilisation of state security the strike was called off early. In June 1961 he was asked to lead the armed struggle and helped to establish Umkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation).

On 11 January 1962, using the adopted name David Motsamayi, Nelson Mandela secretly left South Africa. He travelled around Africa and visited England to gain support for the armed struggle. He received military training in Morocco and Ethiopia and returned to South Africa in July 1962. He was arrested in a police roadblock outside Howick on 5 August while returning from KwaZulu-Natal where he briefed ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli about his trip.

He was charged with leaving the country illegally and inciting workers to strike. He was convicted and sentenced to five years' imprisonment which he began serving in the Pretoria Local Prison. On 27 May 1963 he was transferred to Robben Island and returned to Pretoria on 12 June. Within a month police raided a secret hide-out in Rivonia used by ANC and Communist Party activists, and several of his comrades were arrested.

On 9 October 1963 Nelson Mandela joined ten others on trial for sabotage in what became known as the Rivonia Trial. While facing the death penalty his words to the court at the end of his famous ‘Speech from the Dock’ on 20 April 1964 became immortalised:

“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

On 11 June 1964 Nelson Mandela and seven other accused: Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni were convicted and the next day were sentenced to life imprisonment. Denis Goldberg was sent to Pretoria Prison because he was white, while the others went to Robben Island.

Nelson Mandela’s mother died in 1968 and his eldest son Thembi in 1969. He was not allowed to attend their funerals.

On 31 March 1982 Nelson Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town with Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni. Kathrada joined them in October. When he returned to the prison in November 1985 after prostate surgery Nelson Mandela was held alone. Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee visited him in hospital. Later Nelson Mandela initiated talks about an ultimate meeting between the apartheid government and the ANC.

On 12 August 1988 he was taken to hospital where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After more than three months in two hospitals he was transferred on 7 December 1988 to a house at Victor Verster Prison near Paarl where he spent his last 14 months of imprisonment. He was released from its gates on Sunday 11 February 1990, nine days after the unbanning of the ANC and the PAC and nearly four months after the release of his remaining Rivonia comrades. Throughout his imprisonment he had rejected at least three conditional offers of release.

Nelson Mandela immersed himself in official talks to end white minority rule and in 1991 was elected ANC President to replace his ailing friend Oliver Tambo. In 1993 he and President FW de Klerk jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize and on 27 April 1994 he voted for the first time in his life.

On 10 May 1994 he was inaugurated South Africa’s first democratically elected President. On his 80th birthday in 1998 he married Graça Machel, his third wife.

True to his promise Nelson Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one term as President. He continued to work with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund he set up in 1995 and established the Nelson Mandela Foundation and The Mandela Rhodes Foundation.

In April 2007 his grandson Mandla Mandela became head of the Mvezo Traditional Council at a ceremony at the Mvezo Great Place.

Nelson Mandela never wavered in his devotion to democracy, equality and learning. Despite terrible provocation, he never answered racism with racism. His life has been an inspiration to all who are oppressed and deprived; to all who are opposed to oppression and deprivation.

He died at his home in Johannesburg on 5 December 2013.