Mandela – Message From ROBBEN ISLAND

Linocut on paper
Norman Kaplan, 1986

In 1986, images of Nelson Mandela were still banned in apartheid South Africa, and the country was in the grip of the latest ‘State of Emergency’ declared by apartheid-era president Botha to counter the actions of liberation forces across the country. Pass laws were relaxed due to international condemnation, but apartheid laws remained repressive. Kaplan’s print quotes from Nelson Mandela’s speech to the apartheid court when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, and from the slogans of the mass uprising against apartheid that was taking place during the 1980s.

In 1990, after 27 years in an apartheid prison, Mandela was released unconditionally, and in 1993 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In May 1994 he was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected President. He declared he would serve only one term, and five years later he stepped aside. He died at home in December 2013.

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