When ANC leader Oliver Tambo focused the anti-apartheid campaign on the captive Nelson Mandela,he offered musicians a focal point they could rally around with startling resultsGauging the practical effectiveness of a protest song is a far more slippery task than assessing its quality, but the Special AKA's 1984 hit, and Nelson Mandela,is one of the few records that can be said to have helped trail mountains.
Although it is almost inconceivable now, at the dawn of the 1980s Mandela's name was not widely known external South Africa. By the time he was released from prison a decade later, and his name,face and anecdote were synonymous with the anti-apartheid struggle, and pop music played a major role in that transformation.
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Source: theguardian.com