The man who built the concert was a producer named Tony Hollingsworth, and he had a careful theory about what would and would not work on television. The Anti-Apartheid Movement, which controlled the political credibility of any Mandela event, insisted on three conditions: that the concert focus on all South African political prisoners rather than just Mandela, that it campaign against apartheid by name, and that it call for sanctions. Hollingsworth pushed back. Broadcasters in much of the world would never carry an explicitly political broadcast. A positive birthday tribute, calling only for Mandela's release, might just clear the entertainment commissioning desks. The AAM's London leader, Mike Terry, came around. So did Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the AAM's president and a former priest in southern Africa. The concert would be sold internationally as a birthday party — and inside the entertainment frame, the political message would travel further than any rally could carry it.

Hollingsworth needed names. Dire Straits, then one of the largest acts in the world, said yes only if Hollingsworth could deliver other top acts — and only on condition that he not mention Dire Straits when persuading them. He played the chain of refusals against itself until Simple Minds, George Michael, Whitney Houston, UB40, Aswad, Sly and Robbie, the Bee Gees, Miriam Makeba, and Hugh Masekela had all committed. Eurythmics had refused three times and eventually agreed. To get Sting, Hollingsworth booked himself into the same Swiss hotel as the singer and called from the lobby; Sting was on a world tour that placed him in Berlin the night before and continental Europe the night after, and Hollingsworth proposed flying him in on a private plane, sound-checking him at sunrise, opening the show with him at midday, and flying him back. Sting agreed. Stevie Wonder phoned from America four days before the concert asking if there was still room. Hollingsworth gave him the 25-minute slot originally reserved for an abandoned Prince–Bono duet. The night before, all the talent slept in London hotels. The morning of, the rigs were in place.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement's hand was visible across the day. At least one A-list act played in each of the eleven hours of the broadcast to keep international audiences from drifting away. Harry Belafonte, who had been disappointed not to be invited to sing, gave the opening address. South African dancers performed. The Beatles' producer George Martin was musical director. Bishop Desmond Tutu — Archbishop of Cape Town and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate four years earlier — appeared. The Fox network in the United States cut the political content out of its broadcast, but in countries where the concert ran in full, the name Mandela became unavoidable. Stevie Wonder walked out when his pre-recorded backing tapes were lost, then returned after a backstage rebuild, using Whitney Houston's instruments. Eleven hours of music, and through all of it the same name and the same demand. The concert turned a profit of $5 million, half of which went to the Anti-Apartheid Movement and half to seven charities including Oxfam, Christian Aid, and Save the Children, on Archbishop Huddleston's condition that none of the money buy armaments.

Mandela was 69 years old that night, with his actual seventieth birthday five weeks away on 18 July. He did not see the concert. He learned the next morning what it had been — and what it had been for. The South African government was furious; the British government, then under Margaret Thatcher, was deeply uncomfortable. But the consciousness Hollingsworth had set out to raise had been raised. Eighteen months later, on 11 February 1990, Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison a free man. Within two months, he asked Hollingsworth to organise a second Wembley concert — this time for him to attend in person. On 16 April 1990, Nelson Mandela: An International Tribute for a Free South Africa was broadcast from the same stadium to more than sixty countries. Four years later he became the first democratically elected President of South Africa. The 1988 concert had not freed him by itself. But it had made his name a household word in places where it had previously been deniable.