Consider Oliver Tambo - leader of the Africa National Congress in exile while Mandela was in jail, and consequently in charge of his people's "army" through the ANC and the active military arm Umkhonto we sizwe (MK- the "Spear of the nation"), through 3 decades of exclusion from South Africa until his triumphant return in 1990 when ANC was unbanned and his sad death from a stroke in 1993. In my mind its a better explanation than Cromwell, whatever Elvis C has said!
