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CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South Africans celebrate their “Freedom Day” every April 27, when they held their country’s first major democratic elections in 1994, heralding the official end of racial segregation and apartheid oppression.
Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of that momentous vote, in which millions of black South Africans, young and old, spoke for the first time about their own future, a basic right denied them by a white minority government.
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In the first multiracial elections, the hitherto banned African National Congress party won overwhelmingly and made its leader, Nelson Mandela, the country’s first black president, four years after his release from prison.
Here’s what you want to know about that iconic moment and a South Africa that’s still transforming 30 years later:
The 1994 elections were the culmination of a process that had begun four years earlier, when F. W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president, stunned the world and his country by announcing that the ANC and other anti-apartheid parties would no longer be banned.
Mandela, the face of the anti-apartheid movement, was released from office nine days later, setting him on the path to South Africa’s first black leader.
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South Africa took years to prepare and was still on a knife’s edge in the months and weeks leading up to the election due to ongoing political violence; However, the voting – which lasted four days between April 26 and 29 to accommodate the gigantic number of participants – went ahead successfully.
A country that for decades had been banned and sanctioned through the foreign network due to apartheid has a full-fledged democracy.
Nearly 20 million South Africans of all races voted, compared with just 3 million whites in the last general election under apartheid in 1989.
Associated Press photographer Denis Farrell’s iconic aerial photograph of others waiting patiently for hours in long, winding lines in fields next to a school in Johannesburg’s famed Soweto township captured the determination of millions of black South Africans to be counted regardless. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
“South African heroes are a legend for generations,” Mandela said as he proclaimed victory. “But it is you, the people, who are the real heroes. “
The ANC’s electoral victory led to the final dismantling of apartheid and the drafting of a new charter that has become law in South Africa, guaranteeing equality for all, regardless of race, faith or sexuality.
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Apartheid, which began in 1948 and lasted about part of a century, had oppressed blacks and other non-white people through a series of race-based laws. Not only did the legislation deny them the right to vote, but they also controlled where blacks lived, where they were allowed to pass on any given day, what jobs they were allowed to do, and who they were allowed to marry.
Current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a protégé of Mandela, will lead celebrations marking the anniversary of Freedom Day on Saturday at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the seat of government.
The ANC has been in place since 1994 and while it is still recognised for its central role in the liberation of South Africans, it is no longer celebrated in the same way as it was after this hopeful election.
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South Africa continues to suffer from profound socio-economic disorders in 2024, the most shocking being the widespread and severe poverty that still massively affects the black majority. The official unemployment rate is 32 percent in the world, while it exceeds 60 percent. with a penny for youth and seniors ages 15 to 24.
Millions of black South Africans still live in impoverished and forgotten townships and informal settlements on the outskirts of cities, which many see as a betrayal of the heroes Mandela was referring to. South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world.
The ANC is now widely blamed for the lack of progress in improving the lives of so many South Africans, even though the damage done during decades of apartheid will not be easy to reverse.
The 30th anniversary of 1994 is perhaps set against the backdrop of another election. South Africa will hold its seventh national election since the end of apartheid on May 29, and all opinion polls and analysts predict that the ANC will lose its parliamentary majority in a new phase.
The ANC is still expected to be the largest party and will most likely have to form complex coalitions with smaller parties to remain in government; However, the expected prevailing picture is that more South Africans will vote for other parties in national elections for the first time. in their democracy.
South Africans still appreciate the reminiscence of Mandela and the elusive freedom and prosperity he spoke of in 1994, but most of them now seem willing to look beyond the ANC to see this.
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