In 2017 I learned via the QI Talk forums that there are people with a clear memory that Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s, when in fact he didn't die until 2013. There's a fascinating page dedicated to the phenomenon here. (It originally dates from 2010, when Mandela was still alive, though it's since been updated.)
Now I can understand why people might have initially gained such a false impression. Maybe there was another anti-apartheid activist who died around that time, and people are conflating that memory with their memory of Mandela. For instance, it was pointed out to me that Steve Biko died in 1977, but his fame in the west spread throughout the 80s, particularly with the release of 'Cry Freedom' in 1987.
But I can't for the life of me work out how they continued believing it during the "Free Nelson Mandela" campaign of the 1980s; or after his release from prison in 1990, which was broadcast all round the world; or after his election as South African President in 1994, which gained worldwide headlines; or after he retired as President in 1999. Surely at some point they'd have said to themselves "hang on, so he isn't dead after all?"
Fiona Broome, who coined the term "Mandela effect" and set up the website, says that Steve Biko wasn't the source of the confusion in her case (though it might be for some other people, of course):
I recall Steven Bantu Biko’s murder. That’s not what I’m remembering as I recall Nelson Mandela’s death in prison. However, I appreciate the reference, in case some readers look at that and say, “Oh. Wait. That might the person and events I’m confusing with Mandela.” For me, there’s no question: I remember the news coverage of Nelson Mandela’s death. It was definitely Mandela, not someone else.It does seem as though something very odd is going on here. I completely discount Fiona Broome's own explanation that it's a paranormal phenomenon; the phenomenon of "collective false memory" (as it's more generally known) is well documented.
But believing that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s, when there was so much publicity about the campaign for his release? Really? Even if you had no interest in international politics at the time, you could hardly have missed the song "Free Nelson Mandela" by the Specials (or the Special AKA as they were known at the time), which got to number 9 in the UK charts in 1984. Or the huge 70th birthday concert from Wembley Stadium in 1988, screened in full by the BBC and shown by broadcasters around the world.
At least, not if you lived in the UK. Or in most other countries outside the USA, it seems. (Apart from South Africa itself, of course; but I doubt whether anyone there seriously believed that Mandela was dead.) However, according to the Wikipedia article about the 70th birthday tribute concert, the Fox television network in the US showed only six hours, cut out any references that could be regarded as political, and billed the concert as "Freedomfest" without mentioning Mandela's name in the title.
It's significant that nearly all the supposed recollections of Mandela's death in the 1980s appear to come from the USA. I'm not generally one for conspiracy theories, but were rumours of his death deliberately circulated there in order to discredit the anti-apartheid movement? The USA was one of the strongest opponents of the economic boycott against South Africa. A lot of the anti-apartheid campaign in the 80s was heavily personalized around Mandela. Maybe, if enough people in the USA were led to believe that he was dead, they would have had no reason to support the campaign.
This all sounds a bit Orwellian, but I've read enough about the so-called "Mandela effect" now to think that something must be afoot beyond the usual phenomenon of "collective false memory". This is a thread on Reddit about the phenomenon, and parts of it are quite disturbing. It's comments like the following that make me think that there was some sort of brainwashing exercise going on. (This is perhaps one of the more extreme ones, but it's by no means an isolated occurrence.)
I was taught in kindergarten that he had died in prison. We had funeral/celebrations of life for him in school each year just before Black History Month. We were taught that his death was a symptom of international tyranny, and to fight for freedom of speech, and beliefs, and for people to keep the tight to disagree with each other. We did letters to amnesty international about freeing other political prisoners bc no one should have to die in jail like Mandela. We were taught that the apartheid was still going on, and how evil it was, and how many children were dying of starvation bc of it. Then, abruptly, in fifth grade it was never spoken of again.Something must have caused a significant number of Americans to believe that Nelson Mandela died in the 1980s, when he quite clearly didn't. Here's a comment from Robert Crowder on the original Mandela Effect site that pins the "death" down to a particular week in 1983:
I haven’t thought about this in a while, but last week I was going through some boxes @ my Dads home and found some of my old notebooks and it contains a copy of the current event that I turned in the week ending on March 11, 1983. My report was only detailed about his death in prison and that he had been sick for a while. It focused on how the country of South Africa was pulled together due to his passing. I did not write the Actual date of his death, but I assume it was earlier that week. We had to turn a current event summary in Every Friday about something that happened that week for my Economics class. I am scanning a copy to my Hard drive but do not see a way to post it here. I did not receive a grade on the paper, just a check at the top of the page to remark that I had done my work. Although I have this paper in hand, it is disturbing to me that what I remember is true. I am kinda Freaked over it. My Dad does not remember it but is confused as to why it exists as he knows I could not have recently planted it there.
At another poster's suggestion, I turned to Snopes, that well-known and normally reliable myth-debunking site, for possible elucidation. However their "explanation" was profoundly unconvincing:
Why do some people remember Nelson Mandela dying 30 years before he did? Perhaps it’s simply a case of two isolated bits of knowledge — that Nelson Mandela spent a long time in prison and that he’s dead — being pieced together into a false memory in the absence of an actual recollection of the announcement of his death.Given that the so-called "Mandela effect" was documented at least three years before his death, that simply can't be right.
It was then suggested to me that his death might have been conflated with widespread coverage of a long, solemn procession following Mandela's release in 1990, as this article by Brian Dunning has it:
On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years. Reporters from all over the world covered the event. Tens of thousands of South Africans attended. A convoy of cars, escorted by police, transported Mandela into Capetown where he and other leaders of the African National Congress addressed the crowd. The event lasted much of the day and was a powerful moment of solemn pride. Many Americans watched some part of it on the news, and retained some vague memory of something on TV about a large dignified event in South Africa pertaining to Nelson Mandela, a name many generally recognized but didn't (at the time) know a whole lot about. Some leader of the movement to oppose apartheid. It shouldn't be too surprising that in later years, when the name Nelson Mandela came up, some Americans might remember seeing some large state procession on TV that could easily be mistaken for a funeral.There are at least two problems with this. First of all, pretty much all the people who claim to recall Mandela's premature death place it in the 1980s, and generally the early part of the 1980s - actual dates seem to be a bit vague, but I've seen 1983 mentioned more than once. I suppose that February 1990 was early enough in the new decade that some people might have thought it was the 80s, but it was the "wrong end" of the 80s by most of the accounts that I've read.
But secondly, I find it impossible to imagine how anyone who watched even a few seconds of the coverage could possibly have mistaken it for a funeral. Here's a clip. Cheering crowds, triumphant salutes, flags waving, horns beeping, people running alongside the car to get photos. When did you ever see a funeral like that? And when did you ever see a man give a speech at his own funeral? Who did the great American public think it was, if it wasn't him?
If that theory were true, then Mandela's release from prison would have had to be the last footage of him broadcast on TV - which it clearly wasn't. He was a very prominent figure in world news right up until his election as President and beyond. Unless the US media decided to ignore South Africa from that point onwards.
So it's a good theory, but I'm not convinced. Dunning does make one very good point though:
If Fiona Broome had been a cognitive psychologist instead of a psychic ghost hunter, the idea of a Mandela Effect might never have existed.I agree. She describes herself as a "paranormal consultant" and only appears to be interested in people who support her psychic explanation of the phenomenon. It's a shame, because it means that it can easily be dismissed as some sort of fringe theory that isn't worth investigating, especially when it gets lumped in with easily explained stuff like misspellings of names in popular culture. This appears to be a phenomenon of a totally different order.
I'm willing to believe that there are substantial numbers of Americans who misremember the "Berenstain Bears" as the "Berenstein Bears", for instance. I'd never actually heard of them before I started reading up on all this, but "-stein" is a much commoner ending for American surnames than "-stain", so it's natural that many Americans would have jumped to that conclusion. They would then have had their erroneous beliefs confirmed by others who believed the same thing. This sort of explanation seems to fit the majority of the so-called "Mandela effects" that seem to get discussed on the internet.
But I don't believe that it's a plausible explanation of the false beliefs about Mandela's early death. I'm starting to wonder whether, when people jump on the "Mandela effect" bandwagon because of some other unrelated false belief, they start claiming that they, too, remember Mandela's early death because that's what other people want them to remember. Could it be that some people are now claiming that they once held a false belief of Mandela's early death when, in reality, they believed nothing of the sort?
All the evidence collected about this so far seems to have been purely anecdotal; there's been no attempt to conduct any sort of scientific study that I know of. It would be interesting to try to find out if there are any reports of false beliefs of Mandela's early death dating from before 2010 when Fiona Broome coined the term "Mandela effect" and launched the website. I'm willing to speculate that they're rare or non-existent.
UPDATE (2021): There is one possible explanation which is arguably more plausible than any of the explanations advanced so far. In 1985 it appears that there were false rumours circulating that Mandela had died in prison. This is from the Canberra Times dated 18 September 1985:
Hundreds of Soweto high school students went on a rampage yesterday because of rumours that black leader Mr Nelson Mandela had died in prison. The incident came as police armed with shotguns barred more than 1,000 students and teachers from reopening Cape Town area schools ordered closed by the Government because of rioting and as South African troops and planes swept into southern Angola to strike at South-West African guerillas the military said were planning attacks on towns and military bases. Mr Mandela's wife, Winnie, said the rumours were false.Perhaps this is the incident that people were remembering. To date, I can come up with nothing better.
