South Africa: 25 years after apartheid, still not free

Rand slips over Ramaphosa campaign donation probe
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A quarter of a century after the end of the apartheid in South Africa, large swathes of population still aren’t free given abject poverty and high unemployment and the scourge of corruption affecting the country, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Saturday.

Speaking at a ceremony in Makhanda, formerly Grahamstown, in the south of the country, Ramaphosa said that South Africans were “gathered here to celebrate the day we won our freedom.”

The first democratic elections were held in South Africa on April 27, 1994, with blacks — who make up three quarters of the population — voting for the first time, bringing to an end three centuries of white rule and the apartheid regime in place since 1948.

“We remember the moment we placed a cross on a ballot paper for the first time in our lives,” the president said, paying homage to Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid campaigner who was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

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