South Africa: Between recovery and decline

Forty-eight years ago, on June 16, 1976, the Soweto Uprising broke out. Thousands of schoolchildren poured onto the streets of the Black township outside Johannesburg, protesting against the apartheid regime's demand that they be taught in Afrikaans - the "language of the oppressor," as they put it - instead of English. Hundreds of children were killed by security forces, with estimates ranging from 176 to 700. Those of us who were living there at the time realized that the regime of racial segregation would cause more and more pain and fear, that it would not back down, that this would all end in a bloodbath. And yet, in April 1994, national elections were held in which all the country's people voted - blacks, whites, people of mixed and Asian descent, and others.

The first president of the liberated country was Nelson Mandela. The African National Congress (ANC) gained an...