The end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela's election in South Africa
- Date
- 27 April 1994 (election); 10 May 1994 (inauguration)
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- South Africa
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
On 27 April 1994 South Africa held its first fully democratic election, the first in which citizens of all races could vote, ending the apartheid system of institutionalised racial segregation that had governed the country since 1948.
The African National Congress won about 62 percent of the vote, and on 10 May 1994 Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for 27 years until his release in 1990, was inaugurated in Pretoria as the country's first Black president before a global television audience. The transition capped years of negotiation between the ANC and the National Party government of F. W. de Klerk, with whom Mandela had shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. Mandela's government pursued racial reconciliation rather than retribution, establishing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to confront the crimes of the apartheid era. The peaceful handover of power, achieved without the civil war many had feared, became a globally resonant symbol of negotiated democratic transition and the dismantling of legalised racism, even as deep economic inequalities inherited from apartheid persisted.
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Empires active in 27 April 1994 (election); 10 May 1994 (inauguration)
Related politics & governance events
- Establishment of Apartheid in South Africa1948
- Dissolution of the Soviet UnionAugust–December 1991
- German reunification3 October 1990
- Fall of the Berlin Wall9 November 1989
- Revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe1989 (Autumn of Nations)
- Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika1985–1991 (from 11 March 1985)
Further reading
The wider story
The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence
Gripping account of Africa's nations from independence to the present.
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