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—— ON THIS DAY ——
MAY 10, 1994
Union Buildings, Pretoria, South Africa
31 years ago
Nelson Mandela — the man who spent 27 years in prison for opposing apartheid and emerged to lead the nation that had imprisoned him, photographed in 2008.
On May 10, 1994, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the President of South Africa at the Union Buildings in Pretoria — the administrative capital of the country that had imprisoned him for twenty-seven years. The ceremony was attended by representatives of 140 nations, more than had gathered at any event since the Second World War. South African jet fighters and helicopters performed a flypast; the new rainbow-nation flag was raised; and an eighty-three-year-old man who had been in prison while most of the world's leaders were in secondary school stood up and took the oath of office.
The election on April 27, 1994 — the first in which all South Africans could vote regardless of race — had been the culmination of a process that had seemed, for most of the preceding century, impossible. The African National Congress won 62 percent of the vote. Mandela cast his ballot in Natal, in a line that had been forming since before dawn. He was seventy-five years old. It was the first time in his life he had been allowed to vote in his own country.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The Union Buildings, Pretoria — the seat of the South African government, where Mandela was inaugurated as president on May 10, 1994, before the largest gathering of world leaders since the end of the Second World War.
The transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa was, in the context of the preceding decades, almost miraculous. The country had spent forty-six years under a system of racial segregation so comprehensive and violent that it had been declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations. The ANC had been fighting it since 1960 with bombs as well as with law and politics. The government had been fighting the ANC with assassination, imprisonment, and torture. The settlement reached through negotiations between 1990 and 1994 was not inevitable. It required compromises that many on both sides found agonizing.
Mandela's inauguration address was precise and deliberately inclusive. He spoke of 'the time to heal the wounds,' of the need to build a society in which 'all humanity will be proud.' He acknowledged what South Africa had suffered. He committed to what South Africa would become. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that followed — chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and mandated to hear testimony from both victims and perpetrators of apartheid violence — was the most ambitious attempt at post-atrocity reconciliation since the Nuremberg trials.
The transition's incompleteness was also real. The political settlement that ended apartheid left the economic structures of the apartheid era largely intact. White South Africans retained their wealth; Black South Africans remained disproportionately poor. Mandela himself acknowledged this tension. The ANC governments that followed his — under Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma, and Cyril Ramaphosa — struggled with it. South Africa's inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, is among the highest in the world. The political miracle of 1994 was real. The economic transformation it promised is still incomplete.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
The South African transition demonstrated that a negotiated end to a deeply unjust system was possible without a full-scale civil war. The combination of ANC political pressure, economic sanctions, the collapse of Cold War support for the apartheid regime, and the willingness of both sides to negotiate produced an outcome that most observers in 1988 considered impossible. The lessons have been studied by every subsequent peace process.
Mandela's personal transformation from prisoner to president is one of the defining narratives of the twentieth century. His refusal to be embittered by twenty-seven years of imprisonment — and his deliberate cultivation of reconciliation rather than revenge — set a moral standard that has been invoked in virtually every post-conflict society since.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission established a new model for post-atrocity justice. The idea that truth-telling — even without prosecution — could serve as a form of accountability and a foundation for reconciliation was tested in South Africa on a scale never attempted before. Its successes and failures have been studied in Rwanda, Germany, Argentina, and dozens of other societies grappling with their own dark pasts.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On May 10, 1994, a man who had been imprisoned for twenty-seven years for fighting for his people's right to vote took the oath as his country's president. The country he inherited was damaged and unequal. What he did with it — the Truth Commission, the reconciliation, the model he offered the world — is inseparable from who he chose to be in prison.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another."
— Nelson Mandela, inaugural address, Union Buildings, Pretoria, May 10, 1994
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy, Nelson Mandela's imprisonment and release, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the incomplete promises of 1994?
