In the last dark days of apartheid Nelson Mandela was the name that became known to people across the world. But around him was a cast of characters of all colours and motivations: fellow struggle veterans, exiles, rival black politicians and white liberals and hardliners seeking to placate or frustrate. Some of the leading figures have died, such as Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu – co-founders with Mandela of the ANC youth league in 1943 – and Chris Hani, the South African Communist party leader who may have been president today had he not been assassinated. Others have faded into obscurity. Profiled below are six people who played leading roles in the late 1980s and early 1990s and who still carry influence.

Cyril Ramaphosa

A lawyer by training, Ramaphosa made his name in apartheid South Africa as head of the National Union of Mineworkers, which he turned into the country’s most powerful trade union. He was part of the reception committee that welcomed Mandela on his release in 1990, and a year later became secretary general of the ANC. The party chose Ramaphosa to lead its team negotiating the end of apartheid with the ruling National party, and his tough, skilful performance was widely lauded. Ramaphosa entered government following the first democratic elections in 1994 and was elected chair of the constitutional assembly. He was seen as one of the ANC’s top strategists and Mandela is said to have wanted him to be next president, but powerful party members who had been in exile during white rule preferred one of their own – Thabo Mbeki.

In 1997 Ramaphosa quit politics to move into commerce, where he quickly established himself as one of the leading – and wealthiest – black businessmen in the country. A staunch advocate of black economic empowerment, he founded the Shanduka Group, a black-owned investment company, and held several directorships. Among these was the London-based mining company Lonmin, whose workers staged a violent strike in 2012 – police opened fire and killed 34 in a single day. Ramaphosa, who described it as South Africa’s lowest point since apartheid, was accused of betraying his union roots. However, later that year he made a return to politics, winning election as deputy president of the ANC. Some believe he may now fulfil the destiny Mandela wanted for him.

FW de Klerk

As South Africa’s last white ruler, FW de Klerk oversaw the end of apartheid and the transfer of power to Mandela. A cabinet minister in the Afrikaner-dominated government since the 1970s, De Klerk was not regarded as a reformist until shortly before he became president in 1989, taking over from PW Botha, who had had a stroke. De Klerk quickly ended the ban on the ANC, ordered Mandela’s release, and paved the way for democratic elections. For this, he shared the Nobel peace prize with Mandela in 1993, causing anger among some South Africans who believed it was international pressure rather than De Klerk’s genuine change of heart on apartheid that prompted his compromise. In the first non-racial government, he was vice-president under Mandela – not always seeing eye to eye – before withdrawing from politics in 1997.

A year later he divorced his wife, Marike, following an affair with Elita Georgiades, the wife of a Greek shipping tycoon, whom he married. Today De Klerk lives in Cape Town, where he runs his eponymous foundation, focusing on constitutional issues. In recent speeches he has become increasingly critical of the ANC and warned that the country’s much-lauded constitution is at risk. He told the BBC in 2009 that he hoped to be remembered as somebody who “helped to avoid a catastrophe”.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

Married to Nelson Mandela for just six years before his incarceration in 1963, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela became a global symbol of the struggle against apartheid. She was jailed several times, once held in solitary confinement for 18 months. In 1977 the government banished her from Soweto to Brandfort in the Orange Free State for nine years. A fiery speaker, she courted controversy in the 1980s by endorsing “necklacing” – placing burning car tyres around the neck of apartheid collaborators – as a liberation tool.

Worse was to follow when one of her bodyguards accused her of ordering the death of a 14-year-old boy in 1989. Convicted of kidnapping, her six-year jail sentence was later reduced to a fine. Though she was by her husband’s side on the day he was freed, the marriage only lasted two years before they separated in 1992. The divorce was finalised in 1996 on the grounds of her adultery. By then corruption allegations had ended a short stint as a deputy cabinet minister, and in 2003 Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of fraud and given a suspended sentence on appeal.

She remains popular among many ANC supporters, particularly women. She secured fifth place on the 2009 ANC electoral list, guaranteeing her a parliamentary seat, although she has been criticised for rarely attending debates. She is no friend of the current president, Jacob Zuma, and his allies.

Mangosuthu Buthelezi

A descendant of Zulu royalty, Mangosuthu Buthelezi rose to prominence in the 1970s as chief minister of the Bantustan of Kwazulu, one of the semi-independent “homelands” for black people established by the white government. Though he had been a member of the ANC youth league as a student, and had formed his mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom party (IFP) with the ANC’s blessing, Buthelezi became a strong critic of the armed struggle advocated by Mandela and his allies. This, together with Buthelezi’s claim to lead the Zulu people, angered many in the ANC, who considered him an apartheid collaborator. In the final years of white rule, IFP and ANC supporters repeatedly clashed, leading to thousands of deaths and fears of civil war. Relations were so strained that Buthelezi refused to participate in negotiations for a new constitution and only agreed to stand in the 1994 election after a meeting with Mandela a few weeks before the vote.

Buthelezi was appointed home affairs minister in the first two multiracial governments but fell out badly with Thabo Mbeki over immigration laws before the 2004 election. He was offered the post of deputy president, but refused as it would have required the IFP to cede the premiership of the KwaZulu-Natal province to the ANC. Buthelezi stayed on as an MP. He was returned to parliament in the 2009 election, but has since presided over a split in the IFP which led to it losing support to a breakaway party.

Desmond Tutu

If Mandela was the political symbol of the apartheid oppression, Desmond Tutu represented the moral voice. A trained teacher, he was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960. Together with his mentor, the white priest Trevor Huddleston, he became a leading human rights activist, highlighting the injustice of white rule at home and abroad.

His profile was boosted by the award of the Nobel peace prize in 1984, and two years later he became the first black head of the Anglican church in South Africa. He argued that racist policies were against God’s will, and preached reconciliation rather than uprising, a stance that appealed to many white liberals. His strident backing of the economic boycott sat less comfortably with them, but helped hasten the end of apartheid.

After the 1994 elections, Mandela asked Tutu to head a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would investigate apartheid-era crimes, allowing victims to give testimony and perpetrators to request amnesty. Though it had its critics, the TRC was regarded as a success, and has served as a model for similar processes around the world. In recent years Tutu has become a strong critic of the ANC-led government – especially on corruption and failure to tackle poverty – and of the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe. He remained a close friend of Mandela, who described him as “sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour”. In 2007, the two men announced the creation The Elders, a group of global leaders to support peacebuilding. Tutu has officially retired from public life but cannot resist weighing into various controversies. In 2011 he compared the ANC to the apartheid regime after it refused to allow the Dalai Lama into the country to attend his 80th birthday party, allegedly to avoid offending China.

Thabo Mbeki

Two years before Mandela was jailed on Robben Island, Thabo Mbeki, 19, was sent in exile by the ANC for his own safety. He enrolled at Sussex University, completing a degree in economics and a master’s in African studies before travelling to the Soviet Union for military training. Based mainly in Lusaka, Zambia, where the ANC had its headquarters, Mbeki spent more than two decades representing the ANC. By the late 1980s, he was reporting directly to his mentor and ANC president Oliver Tambo, and leading the secret talks with the South African government. Under Mandela he served as deputy president, took over as party president in 1997, and two years later became South Africa’s second black president.

Possessing a formidable intellect, and a firm pan-African vision, Mbeki presided over strong economic growth and was re-elected in 2004. But his controversial views on Aids, his aloof nature – a sharp contrast from Mandela – as well as slower-than-expected service delivery, meant that his popularity was already declining. Though never close friends, Mandela was always publicly supportive of Mbeki’s leadership, even though their private relations reportedly deteriorated over time. Mbeki resigned as president in 2008 after being recalled by the ANC, following a court ruling of interference in the prosecution of Jacob Zuma, who faced corruption charges. The ruling was overturned on appeal but the damage was done. He has since led an African Union panel brokering peace in the Sudanese region of Darfur and between Sudan and South Sudan. He has established his own foundation but made only occasional public pronouncements, some of which have been interpreted as critical of his successor.