Nicola Coughlan shines a light on extraordinary young people from across history. Join her for 12 stories of rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth.
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Hi, it's Nicola Coughlan.
I'm dropping into this feed to tell you about History's Youngest Heroes, a new podcast for BBC Radio 4.
In this series, you'll hear stories about rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth.
Over the next 10 minutes, you'll hear a preview from episode one.
The South African black nationalist leader, Mr.
Nelson Mandela, is to be freed from PR tomorrow.
The announcement was made by President F.W.
de Klerk at a news conference in Cape Town three hours ago.
Well, I'm a South African.
I was 19 years old on the day that he was released.
Professor Jenny Steinberg teaches African Studies at Yale University.
He remembers that day in February 1990 when Nelson Mandela walked free from prison.
A day after he's released, he came home to Soweto, which had been where he lived 27 years earlier.
And I was one of hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Soweto there to get a glimpse of him, to celebrate perhaps the most extraordinary day in my country's history.
So he has been with me as he's been with every South African ever since.
Always had a place in our hearts, sometimes in complicated ways.
We may remember Mandela as a dignified elderly man who spent 27 years imprisoned by the apartheid regime in South Africa.
After he was released, he negotiated an end to racial segregation in his country and became its first black president.
But Mandela's political career began decades before, when he was a young student in the summer of 1952, Bergalia Bam was 19 years old.