Mandela Elected: Apartheid Ends, South Africa Reborn

Nelson Mandela had spent 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island breaking limestone in the quarry. On May 9, 1994, South Africa's newly elected parliament chose him unanimously as the country's first Black president, completing the most improbable political transition of the twentieth century. A man the apartheid government had imprisoned for life became the head of state that replaced it. The election that preceded Mandela's inauguration was itself extraordinary. From April 26 to 29, 1994, nearly 20 million South Africans voted in the country's first universal suffrage election. Lines stretched for miles at polling stations, and many voters waited eight hours or more. For the majority-Black population, it was the first time they had ever cast a ballot. The African National Congress won 62.6 percent of the vote, short of the two-thirds majority needed to write the constitution alone, a result Mandela considered ideal because it required negotiation. The path from prison to presidency had taken four years of negotiations that repeatedly threatened to collapse into civil war. Right-wing Afrikaner groups staged armed resistance. The Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, under Mangosuthu Buthelezi, boycotted the process until just days before the election. Political violence between ANC and Inkatha supporters killed over 14,000 people between 1990 and 1994. White South Africans hoarded food and withdrew savings, fearing economic collapse. Mandela's genius was reconciliation enacted through personal gesture. He visited Betsie Verwoerd, the widow of apartheid's architect, for tea. He wore a Springbok rugby jersey to the 1995 World Cup final, embracing the sport that had symbolized white South Africa. He appointed his former jailers to positions of honor. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, offered amnesty in exchange for full disclosure of political crimes rather than pursuing mass prosecutions. South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy without civil war remains one of the most remarkable political achievements in modern history. Mandela served one term as president, declining to run for re-election in 1999, and spent his remaining years as a global symbol of moral authority and the possibility of peaceful transformation.