Anthony Lewis

South Africa has been praised as an example of a successful and peaceful political transformation into a democratic society. From 1948 to 1991 its government practiced a policy of official racial segregation called apartheid (separateness). Whites controlled the government and denied nonwhites economic and political rights, including the right to vote. After years of international sanctions and internal unrest, the government repealed the laws underpinning apartheid in 1991. In 1994 in elections open to all races, Nelson Mandela—the head of South Africa’s leading opposition group (the African National Congress) and a political prisoner from 1962 to 1990—was elected president. In the following viewpoint, Anthony Lewis writes that under Mandela’s leadership, South Africa has created a new constitution and a new political culture with high respect for human rights. Lewis...