Hope at the End of the Rainbow

In April 1994, South Africans celebrated the end of apartheid by finally voting in free, multiracial elections. The apartheid system that had so disfigured and isolated the country was brought down with remarkably little bloodshed.

A decade later, the democratic transformation continues with remarkable ease — South Africans will head to the polls again in 2004, as they did in 1994 and 1999, to vote in democratic elections for the presidency and National Assembly. Yet, as then President Nelson Mandela declared in his inaugural address in May 1994, “there is no easy road to freedom.” Indeed, as the indicators below demonstrate, South Africa remains a country in transition.