Shoes Too Small to Fit His Feet

"It didn't exactly spring Mandela from jail single-handed, but it raised awareness of his plight like nothing else and helped to make apartheid one of the defining causes of the 1980s, something the man himself acknowledged after his release in 1990. And Dammers went further by founding the lobby group Artists Against Apartheid. In its broad outline it is an uplifting tale, but the full story is a turbulent affair, involving mental illness, creative paralysis, crippling debt, and a damaging musical row during which Dammers found himself on the opposing side to two black South African musicians who had been fighting apartheid decades before he paid that life-changing visit to Alexandra Palace: Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba."

Spin runs an excerpt from Dorian Lynskey's 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day about the Special A.K.A.'s "Free Nelson Mandela."