President F. W. de Klerk ordered Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990.
De Klerk, whose full name was Frederik Willem de Klerk, became South Africa's state president in September 1989. On February 2, 1990, he announced that the African National Congress and other banned anti-apartheid organizations would be legal again. He also said Mandela would be released, ending his 27 years of imprisonment.
Mandela walked free from Victor Verster Prison near Cape Town on February 11, 1990. De Klerk's decision did not by itself end apartheid, and negotiations were often tense and violent, but it opened the way to a democratic transition. Mandela and de Klerk shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for helping negotiate the end of white-minority rule. The answer is sometimes confused with the prison officials who administered Mandela's confinement, but the political order came from de Klerk, South Africa's president.