1994 South African general election
first South African election held under universal suffrage
General elections were held in South Africa between 26 and 29 April 1994. The elections were the first in South Africa in which citizens of all races could vote, bringing an end to the herrenvolk democracy that had existed since 1948 and marking the country's first election under universal suffrage. The election was conducted under the direction of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), and marked the culmination of the four-year process that ended apartheid.
Millions queued in lines over a four-day voting period. Altogether, 19,726,579 votes were counted, and 193,081 were rejected as invalid. As widely expected, the African National Congress (ANC), whose slate incorporated the labour confederation COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP), won a landslide victory, taking 62 percent of the vote, just short of the supermajority required to unilaterally amend the Interim Constitution.
As required by that document, the ANC formed a Government of National Unity with the National Party (NP) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the two other parties that won more than 20 seats in the National Assembly. The governing NP polled just over 20%, and was thus eligible for a post of Vice President to incumbent president De Klerk. The new National Assembly's first act was to elect Nelson Mandela as President, making him the country's first black chief executive. He then appointed the Cabinet of Nelson Mandela.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1994 South African general election” is first South African election held under universal suffrage. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through South, African and general, not as a finished interpretation.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q957012. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1994 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “1994 South African general election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.