By David Smith
Twenty years after South Africa's first multiracial election, political history cuts little ice with the young electorate
The Guardian, Thursday 24 April 2014
Six months pregnant, Elizabeth Kganyo was determined to cast her
vote, even if it meant standing in a sun-baked queue for hours on end.
"I was so excited because it was the first time," she recalls, sitting
on an upturned plastic basket outside her shack in Diepsloot, north of
Johannesburg. "Everybody wanted to vote. Everybody was happy."
South Africa held its first multiracial election 20 years ago
on Sunday, defying bombs, bluster and the threat of civil war to
conjure a spectacle of voters in long, winding lines that ravished the
world. But for Kganyo, like millions of others who put a cross beside
the face of Nelson Mandela, those days of miracles and wonder are a
fading memory. "It's not the same now. We're not happy to vote any more.
It's not like the first time."
Next month, South Africans return to the polls for the first election since Mandela's death
and the first in which the so-called "born free" generation – those
whose lives began after racial apartheid – are eligible to vote. The
African National Congress is in no doubt of a fifth consecutive victory
on 7 May but faces an unprecedented long-term challenge both on the
streets and at the ballot box.
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