When Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990, after 27 years of confinement, millions of South Africans didn’t show up to work. Nor did they stay home. They took to the streets in vast numbers, turning every city and town across the country into a gigantic party. Mandela’s freedom was a prelude to their freedom; four years later, the apartheid regime ceded power to a democratically elected government, and Mandela was sworn in as the first legitimate president in the country’s history.
But one South African woman did not leave her home the day Mandela was freed. She locked her door and put a sign up on her gate asking journalists to stay away. Her name was Evelyn Mase. She had once been Nelson Mandela’s wife and had borne four of his children. The couple had divorced 32 years earlier, just three months before Nelson married his second wife, the now famous Winnie Mandela.
