But the Apartheid government’s demands during negotiations meant those hopes were frustrated.

Political violence threatened to once again set South Africa on a path to civil war.

Only just out of prison, Nelson Mandela was needed by his nation more than ever.

Nelson Mandela
My message to those of you involved in these battles of brother against brother is this – take your guns, your knives and your pangas and throw them into the sea.

The demands meant more sacrifices – a family very much in need of a father figure would once again have to take back seat.

Mandela’s wife Winnie, who had acted as his mouthpiece during the years in jail, had been continuously harassed and persecuted by the authorities.
Their daughters Zinzi and Zeni had grown up watching their mother persecuted.
And Winnie herself had become increasingly militant. Her husband’s release from jail might have offered some respite.

Instead, another generation would lose him too.

Ndileka Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s Granddaughter:
My illusions of having him back were shattered. Because before then I thought, finally… you must remember I grew up without a father because my father died while he was in prison and for me - I had grown up with a very strong female influence - and perhaps I thought to myself it was the time when I would be able to reconnect with that part of my life being the male figure.

But those illusions were shattered. Because I mean I thought I would finally go and have coffee with him in a coffee shop and talk about what… the relationship I had with my grandmother and granddad are completely difference, in the sense that I could rock up at my grandma and talk about anything under the sun and yet with granddad, well, if he was an icon while he was in jail he was even more of an icon when he came out.

And he was sort of unreachable. Because now you had to make an appointment to go and see him because he was inundated because he had bigger issues to tackle.

Those issues included negotiating a timetable for elections … by building trust between black and white South Africans.

Mandela’s leadership at that time led to one of the country’s greatest triumphs – its constitution, regarded internationally as a model of its kind.

And yet, on our journey to find Mandela in the modern South Africa, we still come across a society that seems highly divided.

Driving around Cape Town, the stunning natural scenery, gardens and wine estates, are, in an instant, replaced by the informal settlements that indicate a grinding poverty.

Which makes you wonder.
Has the transition to the post-Apartheid South Africa envisaged by Nelson Mandela, been fully realized? Have the country’s townships really changed?