Freedom Day is a South African public holiday celebrated on 27 April. It celebrates freedom and commemorates the first post-apartheid elections held on that day in 1994. The elections were the first non-racial national elections where everyone of voting age of over 18 from any race group, including foreign residents, was allowed to vote. Previously, under the apartheid regime, non-whites had only limited rights to vote. It is part of the twelve public holidays determined by the Public Holidays Act (No. 36 of 1994).
On the first commemoration of the holiday, President Nelson Mandela addressed Parliament: As dawn ushered in this day, the 27th of April 1995, few of us could suppress the welling of emotion, as we were reminded of the terrible past from which we come as a nation; the great possibilities that we now have; and the bright future that beckons us. And so we assemble here today, and in other parts of the country, to mark a historic day in the life of our nation. Wherever South Africans are across the globe, our hearts beat as one, as we renew our common loyalty to our country and our commitment to its future.
The history of South Africa starts more than 100,000 years ago, when the first humans inhabited the region. The historical record of this ethnically diverse country is generally divided into four distinct periods: the pre-colonial era, the colonial era, the post-colonial and apartheid era, and the post-apartheid era. Much of this history, particularly of the colonial and post-colonial eras, is characterized by clashes of culture, violent territorial disputes between European settlers and indigenous people, dispossession and repression, and other racial and political tensions.
From 1948 to 1994, South African politics were dominated by Afrikaner nationalism centered around racial segregation and white minority rule known officially as apartheid, an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness". It was an extension of segregationist legislation enacted prior to the 1934 Union Act. On 27 April 1994, after decades of armed struggle and international opposition to apartheid, during which military and political support was provided primarily by the Soviet Union to the non-racial African National Congress (ANC), the ANC achieved victory in the country's first democratic election. Since then the ANC has dominated the politics of the country in an uneasy alliance with the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
