Freedom Day commemorates the first post-apartheid non-racial national elections (1994).
27 April – Freedom Day
Freedom Day commemorates the first post-apartheid non-racial national elections (1994).
Under the apartheid government, people of colour were not allowed to vote.
Under the apartheid government, people of colour were not allowed to vote.
After the 1994 elections, Nelson Mandela appointed Justice Albie Sachs as one of the first members of the Constitutional Court. As part of this role, he helped draft South Africa’s now highly valued Constitution which is considered to be one of the most modern and advanced constitutions in the world. It declares that “everyone is equal before the law”, and prohibits discrimination on the grounds of “race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth”.
Before getting to this point, Justice Sachs played a prominent part in the struggle for justice in South Africa, and suffered at the hands of the previous government. He was subjected to solitary confinement, torture and sleep deprivation. He even escaped death whilst in exile, when a car bomb attack in Mozambique in 1988, nearly cost him, his life.
Sachs survived the explosion that was intended to kill him but lost his right arm and the sight in his left eye. Sachs made a conscious decision to not be bitter against those who planted the bomb, but rather to continue the fight for all people in South Africa to be free, to live in harmony without racism or sexism.
Drawing strength and inspiration from the incident, he said “In a strange way the bomb blew away the unhappiness – that residue that had been there since the solitary confinement. They’d come to kill me, they’d tried and failed. If I could get better, my country could get better.” Sachs went on to write 'The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter', in which he celebrates his life, the mission of the ANC, and broadly, humanity.
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