Free Nelson Mandela

The story

"Nelson Mandela", known in some versions as "Free Nelson Mandela", was written by the British musician Jerry Dammers and recorded by the band the Special A.K.A., with Stan Campbell singing lead. Dammers said he knew very little about Mandela until he went to an anti-apartheid concert in London in 1983, which gave him the idea for the song. At the time few people outside South Africa knew who Mandela was, and the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, had condemned him as a terrorist for his resistance to the South African government.

The song came out in 1984 as a single with "Break Down the Door" on the other side, produced by Elvis Costello. Molly and Polly Jackson, two girls the drummer John Bradbury had met in a bar in Camden, sang backing vocals, and session singers including Claudia Fontaine and Caron Wheeler sang the chorus. Unlike most protest songs it is upbeat and celebratory and draws on South African music. Campbell left the band after the recording and the video, and returned only for two appearances on the BBC's Top of the Pops in 1984.

The single reached number nine on the UK Singles Chart and was immensely popular in Africa. It was banned in South Africa, but, as Dammers recalled, it got back into the country and was played at football matches, which were communal gatherings of black South Africans, at other sporting events and at ANC rallies. The South African writer Jonny Steinberg credited it with spreading not only Mandela's name but what that name came to mean, and the broadcaster Paul Gambaccini put part of its weight down to the band's standing in Britain.

A remake for Mandela's 70th birthday tribute came out in 1988, with Elvis Costello, Dave Wakeling, Ranking Roger and Lynval Golding among the backing singers. At the tribute for his 90th birthday in London's Hyde Park in June 2008 the song closed the show, sung by Amy Winehouse. Since 1984 the students' union of Wadham College, Oxford, has ended every college dance with it. In March 2010 the New Statesman listed it among its "Top 20 Political Songs". After Mandela's death in December 2013 the single re-entered the UK chart at number 96, and in January 2014 Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band opened their first concert in South Africa, at the Bellville Velodrome in Cape Town, with it.

What it says

A protest song calling for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison under apartheid. Its mood is joyful and celebratory rather than angry.

The words

The words of this song are still in copyright, so they are not printed here. “What it says” above gives their theme in our own words, and the performance below lets you hear them.