South Africa is a shining example of how the human race can come together peacefully to end great wrong. Twenty five years ago today, white South Africans voted in a referendum to end apartheid as part of a steady process by which the terrible injustice and oppression of apartheid enforced by the white population on all others ended peacefully. Despite apartheid’s shocking destruction of so many lives, South Africa did not descend into civil war as the formerly oppressed black and coloured populations regained their full rights.
Apartheid had been in operation for more than 40 years when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 by President FW de Klerck. The 1992 referendum paved the way for a new constitution, which allowed real democracy to come to South Africa for the first time, and Mandela took office as South Africa’s first president with a genuine mandate. His vision of a united South Africa is what steered his troubled people through the next few years and his remarkable insistence that both white oppressors and black victims had a valid place in the new South Africa allowed all sides to come together to build a new society.
Rather than put the entire white population on trial for their collective actions, Mandela insisted on full transparency combined with forgiveness. The key to this was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that exposed the terrible crimes of the apartheid regime, and of the individuals in the system who enforced it. But this exposure did not lead to mass trials on the Nuremburg model, and Mandela led the way in asking the country to move on.
This exceptional statesmanship is what made the new South Africa such a beacon to the rest of the world. It is a tragedy that Mandela’s successors have not lived up to his high standards, but it is encouraging that the legal and political process that was established by Mandela is currently seeking to hold President Jacob Zuma to account.
The Constitutional Court has found that Zuma has not upheld the constitution and has also found parliament guilty of not holding the president accountable. But as South Africa ploughs through this field of misery, the people and its many millions of friends around the world can take pride in remembering the glory days of the early 1990s when South Africa gave us all a magnificent example of how conflict should end.
