Cape Town, South Africa — South Africans celebrate their “Freedom Day” every April 27th, when they remember their country’s first democratic elections in 1994, which announced the official end of racial segregation and apartheid oppression.
Saturday is the 30th anniversary of that momentous vote, when millions of black South Africans, young and old, decided for the first time their own future, a fundamental right denied to them by a white minority government.
The first multiracial election saw the previously banned African National Congress Party win in a landslide and made its leader, Nelson Mandela, the country’s first black president, four years after he was released from prison.
Here’s what you need to know about this iconic moment and a South Africa that’s changing again 30 years later:
The 1994 elections were the culmination of a process that began four years earlier, when FW de Klerk, the last president of the apartheid era, shocked the world and his country by announcing that the ANC and other anti-apartheid parties would be annulled.
Mandela, the face of the anti-apartheid movement, was released from prison nine days later, putting him on the path to becoming South Africa’s first black leader.
South Africa needed years to prepare and was still on a knife’s edge in the months and weeks leading up to the elections due to ongoing political violence, but the vote – held over four days between 26 and 29 April to accommodate the large number of people who attended – continued successfully.
A country that was rejected and sanctioned by the international community for decades due to apartheid has emerged as a full democracy.
Almost 20 million South Africans of all races voted, compared to just 3 million whites in the last general election under apartheid in 1989.
Associated Press photographer Denis Farrell’s iconic aerial photograph of people waiting patiently for hours in long, winding lines in fields near a school in Johannesburg’s famous Soweto township captured the determination of millions of black South Africans from finally be counted. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
“South Africa’s heroes are legends that span generations,” said Mandela when proclaiming victory. “But it is you, the people, who are our true heroes.”
The ANC’s electoral victory ensured that apartheid was finally dismantled and that a new Constitution was drawn up and became the highest law of South Africa, guaranteeing equality for all, regardless of their race, religion or sexuality.
Apartheid, which began in 1948 and lasted nearly half a century, oppressed black people and other people of color through a series of race-based laws. The laws not only denied them the right to vote, they also controlled where black people lived, where they could go on a given day, what jobs they could hold, and who they could marry.
Current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – a protégé of Mandela – will lead celebrations for the 30th anniversary of Freedom Day on Saturday at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the seat of government.
The ANC has been in government since 1994 and although it is still recognized for its central role in liberating South Africans, it is no longer celebrated in the same way as it was in the hopeful aftermath of those elections.
South Africa in 2024 has deep socioeconomic problems, none more shocking than the widespread and severe poverty that still overwhelmingly affects the black majority. The official unemployment rate is 32%, the highest in the world, while it is over 60% for young people between 15 and 24 years old.
Millions of black South Africans still live in abandoned, impoverished neighborhoods and informal settlements on the outskirts of cities, in what many consider a betrayal of the heroes Mandela spoke of. South Africa is still ranked as one of the most unequal countries in the world.
The ANC is now largely blamed for the lack of progress in improving the lives of so many South Africans, even though the damage from decades of apartheid was not easy to undo.
The 30th anniversary of 1994 falls with another possibly pivotal election in the backdrop. South Africa will hold its seventh national vote since the end of apartheid on May 29, with all opinion polls and analysts predicting that the ANC will lose its parliamentary majority in a new milestone.
The ANC is still expected to be the largest party and will probably have to enter into complicated coalitions with smaller parties to remain part of the government, but the prevailing picture is that more South Africans will vote for other parties in the elections national. for the first time in its democracy.
South Africans still cherish the memory of Mandela and the elusive freedom and prosperity he spoke of in 1994. But most of them now seem ready to look beyond the ANC to achieve it.
___
AP Africa News:
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
