A revolutionary turned visionary, Nelson Mandela first fired the spirits of politically conscious Bermudians more than 50 years ago.

Decades later the Island also played a quiet role in talks between South Africa’s National Party and the African National Congress — secret negotiations held shortly before the 1990 release of Mr Mandela and other ANC prisoners.

“Nelson Mandela became an icon for Bermudians,” recalled activist Glen Fubler, a founder of the local anti-apartheid movement.

“He is African, and the majority of Bermudians are persons of African descent, so there was a natural commonality — even though his essence is human, and beyond ethnicity.”

Mandela’s arrest in 1962 coincided with the global rise of Black Power and African consciousness. For Bermudians, Mr Mandela came to embody the struggle against South Africa’s apartheid regime — a movement that also paralleled the fight against racism by the Island’s intellectuals and activists.

Bermudian Ronald Lightbourne, as a student in 1960s London, made headlines when he and other activists took to the courts at Wimbledon to protest apartheid while a South African athlete was in mid-play.

Mr Lightbourne, along with Margaret Carter and Canon Thomas Nisbett, became a key early member of Bermuda’s anti-apartheid campaign.

Union member Alvin Williams said: “For black people living on this side of the world, in the US and Bermuda, Mr Mandela became a symbol — because we were undergoing our own civil rights struggle. He was always there. Whenever we got ready for our own meetings, we would always be reminded of him in prison.”

From the Bermuda Industrial Union to the Progressive Labour Party, to movements like the Black Beret Cadre, Mr Mandela became an enduring symbol.

As Mr Williams pointed out, while Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were assassinated, and Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, Mandela remained — albeit in jail.

“He was in prison, but it was almost as if he wasn’t,” Mr Williams told The Royal Gazette. “His image and presence were always out there.”

Mandela and his cause provoked eye-catching demonstrations in Bermuda.

Himself a Black Beret member, Mr Fubler recalled the 1970 burning of the Union Jack outside City Hall that saw John Bassett Junior imprisoned. That display of anger was launched to protest the UK government’s arms sales to South Africa.

“In retrospect,” Mr Fubler conceded, “when we did that, nobody understood what we were doing.”

The cause gradually flourished in Bermuda. The Bank of Bermuda was picketed for lending to South Africa, and Bermuda-based businessman John Deus drew intense flak for supplying the then-sanctioned state with oil.

By the mid-1980s, Mr Mandela and his cause had become a very public cause, regardless of race. Bermuda’s own sanctions against South Africa defied British foreign policy, according to former Premier Sir John Swan.

Locals showed support with a variety of popular demonstrations: driving with their lights on one day, followed by a candlelit vigil.

Behind the scenes, in Somerset’s Lantana Cottage Club, delegates from the National Party and the ANC held two sets of talks in Bermuda as South African’s ruling regime began to crumble toward the decade’s end.

In 1990, when Mr Mandela was released from prison after 27 years, nearly 2,000 jubilant Bermudians took to the streets in a march of celebration — and heartfelt tributes poured from the Island on the occasion of MR Mandela’s 1994 ascension to presidency of South Africa.

Now the local manifestation of what Mr Mandela stood for was the group Beyond Barriers, which brought a variety of speakers from South Africa to the Island.

During a 1998 visit to the Island, South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Franklin Sonn, drew applause when he addressed Bermudians of African descent as “our people”.

And the Archbishop of Durban, the Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane — who spent time in prison with Mr Mandela — visited the Island in 2002 as part of the First African Diaspora Heritage Conference.

Mr Mandela’s next message to resonate powerfully in Bermuda was the phrase “truth and reconciliation”, the commission he founded alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Mr Mandela’s restorative justice approach to South Africa’s racist past has been suggested for the Island to reckon with its own legacy of racial injustice.

Kim Swan, then a senator for the United Bermuda Party, quoted Mr Mandela in 2005 when he urged the creation of a similar commission here.

In 2006, backbencher Renee Webb tabled a motion in the House of Assembly supporting it.

Her motion wasn’t successful — but the idea hasn’t gone away.

“Truth and reconciliation” was often cited by supporters and detractors of 2007’s Bermuda Race Relations Initiative, better known as the Big Conversation.

Ultimately, it was Mr Mandela’s daughter, Maki Mandela, who came to visit the Island in 2008 — and advocated open conversation between black and white Bermudians, suggesting Bermuda emulate her native country’s reconciliation.

Dr Mandela also took Bermuda’s traditional water catchment technique back to the Development Bank of Southern Africa.

In his twilight years, Mr Mandela transcended politics and race. His human message was often quoted by local groups such as the Commission for Racial Equality, and the anti-discrimination body CURB?(Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda).

With his passing, Bermuda’s tributes to Mr Mandela’s life and message will show his continued and enduring hold on the Island’s consciousness.