The Deadly Prelude to South Africa's First Free Elections – The New York Times

South Africa’s Election
The vote in 1994 was a time of hope — but in the weeks before, the country came close to the abyss. A photographer remembers what he witnessed.
The vote in 1994 was a time of hope — but in the weeks before, the country came close to the abyss. A photographer remembers what he witnessed.
Young men in Bekkersdal, a Black township west of Johannesburg, dragging the body of a comrade killed in street battles in February 1994.Credit…
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Photographs and Text by Joao Silva
The photographer, who is based in South Africa, where he grew up, spent the first years of his career documenting the end of apartheid. He has been working for The New York Times since 1997. He took these pictures in 1994, for The Associated Press.
Thirty years ago, Black South Africans voted for the first time as the country celebrated the monumental birth of a democracy. As I write this, South Africa is bathed in warm winter sunlight and South Africans are free.
That day, April 27, 1994, changed the lives of everyone in the country. I was there. But I can only vaguely remember it.
I do, however, vividly remember the cost in human lives that led to that victorious day, as what amounted to a proxy war fueled by elements of the apartheid state pitted ethnic groups against one another. Those who hoped the bloodshed would derail democratic negotiations conveniently called it Black-on-Black violence.
Four years passed between Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and that first real election. In that time, as the apartheid government slowly settled the terms of its dissolution with political leaders it had long sought to suppress, 14,000 people died violently.
Many South Africans have perhaps chosen to forget. Younger ones may simply not know. But here is what I saw in the months before the vote.
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