February 11th 1990—for me, an unforgettable day. I was 7 years old; he had been in prison for 27 years. Sunday morning was just getting started when the phone rang and after a brief conversation, my mother turned around to inform us that Nelson Mandela had been freed. I can remember wondering if I’d heard right. Nelson Mandela? The Nelson Mandela whose face, adorned with the ANC colors, was glued onto one of our empty kitchen cupboards? The ANC leader who had been in jail for more years that my imagination could grasp?

I concluded that indeed miracles are possible and chose to hope a little more. Maybe this means that the Boers will stop will stop their terrorist attacks on Mozambique; that a new South African government will take down the electric fence on the border, a fence which has maimed so many of us fleeing the economic and military hardship perpetrated by the Apartheid regime; maybe our “civil” war will end and I will be able to go to the outskirts of Maputo, or even my grandfather’s home in Inhambane, without fearing that the “bandidos armados” (Apartheid-sponsored RENAMO troops) will kidnap me and take me to one of their army camps; and last but not least, maybe I will no longer have to share the same Eastern European plastic airplane toy with every other kid in the city.

Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment was my imprisonment, and his freedom, my freedom because Mandela, along with comrades Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and Oliver Tambo articulated a vision that placed the anti-Apartheid struggle in the context of a broader regional struggle against colonialism and imperialism.

Now in my mid-twenties, it is clear to me that vision is insufficient. The Freedom Charter lies by the wayside and South Africa has fomented and embraces its status of hegemon in the region. As 32,000 Mozambicans fled South Africa this May, in many cases leaving everything they owned behind, the South African government continued to deport undocumented Mozambican migrant workers, further taxing the Mozambican emergency relief operations. In fact some reports suggested that South African farm owners were calling the immigration services at the end of May to avoid paying farm workers’ monthly wages. Is this what post-Apartheid regional cooperation has come to be? The front-line states paid a tremendous cost for the anti-Apartheid movement and the migration of hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans to South Africa is the result of this cost.

Sunday, February 11th will be imprinted in my memory for the rest of my life and I know I owe something big to Mandela, but I also know that the anti-Apartheid struggle is not over. On the occasion of Mandela’s 90th birthday, it is important to take stock of the fundamental economic, political and social structures of Apartheid that continue to thrive in South Africa and the Southern African region.

A Luta Continua!

*Ruth Castel-Branco is an organizer for DC Jobs with Justice.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/