Video: '5th August 1962: Nelson Mandela arrested and jailed'

(Sunday, August 5, 1962) — South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, disguised as a chauffeur while on his way from Durban to Johannesburg, was arrested today when armed police at a roadblock flagged down his car outside Howick in Natal, the beginning of 27 years of imprisonment and jailed in Johannesburg’s Marshall Square prison.

In later years, Donald Rickard, a former American diplomat, revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency, which feared Mandela’s associations with communists, had informed the South African police of his location.

Video: '5th August 1962: Nelson Mandela arrested and jailed'

Mandela, 44, was charged with inciting workers’ strikes and leaving the country without permission. Following the Rivonia Trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 12, 1964,for conspiring to overthrow the state.

Video: 'THE STORY OF NELSON MANDELA - BBC NEWS'

Mandela served 27 years in prison, split between Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison, and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure and fears of racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990.