Nelson Mandela Elected President of South Africa
Nelson Mandela's election as South Africa's first democratically elected president on 27 April 1994 — 'Freedom Day,' the first election in which all South Africans could vote — completed the transition from apartheid that had begun with his release from 27 years' imprisonment in 1990 and the ANC's unbanning. The transition was negotiated, not revolutionary: the National Party, under F.W. de Klerk, accepted the principle of one-person-one-vote knowing it would lose power; the ANC accepted a Government of National Unity and power-sharing mechanisms knowing it could have governed alone. Mandela's five-year presidency was defined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu), which offered amnesty in exchange for full disclosure of apartheid-era crimes — a model of transitional justice studied worldwide. The economic settlement — which preserved existing property rights and integrated South Africa into global markets without redistribution — was less studied for its structural consequence: the extreme inequality that apartheid had created was not addressed, producing a democratic state with persistently Gini coefficients above 0.60 and the social tensions they generate.
- Year: 1994 CE
- Category: Political
