When the Nationalist Party, with a majority of European South Africans, Keep The Immigrants Deport The Racists shirt won the general election, Mandela began to join the movement against the party's apartheid policies. During that time, steadfast in his goal of human rights, repeatedly refusing the conditions of release from the authorities, Nelson Mandela became a symbol and inspiration for the struggle to abolish the regime apartheid in South Africa. The apartheid regime was abolished in South Africa in 1993, marking the end of the most repressive apartheid regime in history.