Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa’s first Black president

Story: 1994 C.E.  |  Last updated: May 10, 1994

On May 10, 1994 C.E., on the grounds of the Union Buildings in Pretoria, a man who had spent 27 years behind bars stood before the world and took the oath of office as the first Black president of South Africa. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela — prisoner, activist, negotiator — had become head of state of the country that once condemned him to life imprisonment. More than a billion people watched the ceremony on television. Many wept.

Key facts

• Nelson Mandela inauguration: On May 10, 1994 C.E., Mandela was sworn in at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, attended by dozens of heads of state and watched by an estimated global television audience of over a billion people.
• South Africa’s first free elections: On April 26–29, 1994 C.E., more than 22 million South Africans cast ballots in the country’s first-ever multiracial democratic elections — many waiting in lines stretching for miles under the Southern Hemisphere’s autumn sun.
• African National Congress victory: Mandela and the ANC won an overwhelming majority, forming a national unity coalition with F.W. de Klerk’s National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party — a deliberate act of reconciliation rather than retribution.

Twenty-seven years in the making

Mandela was born in 1918 C.E. in the Transkei region of South Africa, the son of the chief of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people. He chose law over the chieftaincy, and in 1944 C.E. he joined the African National Congress, a political organization working to win rights for the Black majority in white-ruled South Africa.

When the National Party came to power in 1948 C.E. and formalized apartheid — a system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy — the ANC’s membership swelled. Mandela rose to deputy national president, organizing strikes, boycotts, and marches.

After the massacre of peaceful Black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960 C.E., Mandela helped form the ANC’s paramilitary wing to engage in acts of sabotage against the government. He was arrested in 1962 C.E., and in 1964 C.E., following the celebrated Rivonia Trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He served the first 18 of his 27 years at the brutal Robben Island Prison — confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing, permitted one visitor per year for 30 minutes.

He never broke. From inside prison, he remained the symbolic center of the anti-apartheid movement and led a campaign of civil disobedience that forced South African officials to improve conditions on Robben Island.

The long negotiation

In 1989 C.E., South African president F.W. de Klerk began dismantling apartheid. He lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and on February 11, 1990 C.E., ordered Mandela’s release after 27 years. Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison with his fist raised — an image that traveled around the world in hours.

What followed was four years of extraordinarily difficult negotiations between the ANC and the white minority government — punctuated by political violence, mass protests, and real fears that South Africa could descend into civil war. Mandela and de Klerk earned the Nobel Peace Prize jointly in 1993 C.E. for their role in steering the country toward a peaceful transition.

Nelson Mandela inauguration and the promise of reconciliation

The ceremony on May 10, 1994 C.E. was one of the most watched political events in the world. Mandela wore a suit. South African fighter jets and helicopters — the same military apparatus that had enforced apartheid — flew overhead in his honor. Dignitaries from across the globe filled the amphitheater.

In his inaugural address, Mandela said: “The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come.”

He did not speak of revenge. He spoke of a shared future.

Lasting impact

As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which gave victims of apartheid-era human rights abuses a formal forum to be heard — and offered a model of transitional justice that other nations have since studied and adapted. In 1996 C.E., he presided over a new South African constitution, widely regarded as one of the most progressive in the world.

Beyond South Africa, the Nelson Mandela inauguration sent a signal felt across the continent and the world: that political transformation of extraordinary scale was possible through negotiation, moral courage, and a refusal to let bitterness govern. His example shaped how a generation of activists, leaders, and ordinary people understood what peaceful change could look like.

The South African government that emerged from 1994 C.E. remains a constitutional democracy with a free press, an independent judiciary, and universal suffrage — achievements that did not exist a decade before.

Blindspots and limits

South Africa in 1994 C.E. was not a solved country — it was a country that had chosen a path. Extreme economic inequality between racial groups persisted long after the end of apartheid, and Mandela’s own ANC government faced criticism over the pace of land reform and the distribution of wealth. The violence that accompanied South Africa’s transition, including conflict between ANC and Inkatha supporters in KwaZulu-Natal, claimed thousands of lives in the years leading up to the election. The inauguration was a beginning, not an end — and the distance between the promise of 1994 C.E. and the lives of millions of South Africans remains a subject of serious debate today.