Events

1994 South African General Election

Citation Formats

General Reference

Political Atlas. "1994 South African General Election." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://political.interactiveatlas.org/events/1994-south-african-general-election.

APA Style

Political Atlas. (n.d.). 1994 South African General Election. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://political.interactiveatlas.org/events/1994-south-african-general-election

BibTeX

@misc{politicalatlas-1994-south-african-general-election,
  author = {Political Atlas},
  title = {1994 South African General Election},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://political.interactiveatlas.org/events/1994-south-african-general-election},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

South Africa's first election held under universal adult suffrage, conducted from 26 to 29 April 1994 and won by the African National Congress with 62.7 percent of the vote. Nearly twenty million South Africans of all races voted, many for the first time in their lives, ending three centuries of white minority rule and formally closing the apartheid era. Nelson Mandela, released from prison in 1990 after twenty seven years, was inaugurated as the country's first Black president on 10 May 1994.

Facts

Year

1994 1

Location

South Africa 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Decisive Moment Of

Anti-Apartheid Movement

Source South African General Elections 1994 (SAHO)

Influenced By

Anti-Apartheid Movement

Decades of internal and international pressure against apartheid forced the negotiations that produced South Africa's first universal suffrage election.

Source South African General Elections 1994 (SAHO)

Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA)

The interim constitution CODESA's negotiations produced set the terms on which the 1994 election was held.

Source The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA): CODESA 1 (SAHO)