Although President de Klerk ordered Madiba's release in February 1990, negotiations had actually started secretly five years before.
A key figure who helped broker the agreement between the apartheid government and the ANC was a Briton called Michael Young.
A former politician, he was the public affairs director of the British mining company, Consolidated Goldfields with a vested interest in peace as the preferred environment for their operations.
With his company's backing, he set about trying to bring the two sides together - he explained what happened to 大象传媒's Peter Ndoro.