NEWS & MEDIA

TEN YEARS OF FREEDOM

 

“MANDELA PRAISES SOUTH AFRICA'S POST APARTHEID ACHIEVEMENTS”

Poverty, unemployment and Aids are among the daunting challenges South Africa faces as it celebrates its first decade of multiracial rule, former President Nelson Mandela said today.

But he said the country now has the weapon of democracy with which to unite the nation and tackle its problems.

“We have indeed put our racially divided past firmly behind us and face the future with the confidence of a united, non-racial, democratic country,” Mandela said in a statement, as the country prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of apartheid’s end on April 27.

Mandela became an international icon during his 27 years in jail under apartheid. After leading negotiations to end the racist and brutal white regime, he was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

“Nothing else symbolised the birth of our non-racial democracy so vividly as those wonderful elections days in April 1994,” Mandela said today. “It is proper that we marked a decade in the life of democratic South Africa by once more coming out voting for our national and provincial legislatures.”

Mandela’s African National Congress won its most decisive election victory yet on April 14, picking up just under 70% of the vote and assuring President Thabo Mbeki a second five year term.

The 85-year-old Mandela paid tribute to his successor, calling him a “shining and inspiring example” of a younger generation of leaders guiding the country toward a secure and prosperous future.

Since he retired in 1999, Mandela has championed the rights of South Africa’s most vulnerable – the poor, children and Aids sufferers.

“Too many people in our country are still suffering the hardships and deprivations of poverty,” Mandela said. ”And the threat of HIV/Aids looms large in virtually all aspects of national life.”

But he said one of the simplest and most fundamental gains of South Africa’s young democracy is that the people now govern.

“There are certainly many areas of legitimate and valid complaint and dissatisfaction,” he said. “All of this, however, is played out, contested, debated and accounted for within the secure framework of a multiparty, pluralist democracy.”

Mandela urged South Africans not to take their achievements for granted.

“We have often been referred to as a miracle nation,” he said. “That should make us humble and inspire us as we start a next decade on the long road of consolidating our freedom and building a better life for all our people.”

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