Nelson Mandela and Michael Manley
*On this date in 1994, South Africa rejoined the Commonwealth after a 33-year absence. Their exclusion was based on international pressure against racism.
Before the rejoining, their laws had always been discriminatory and humiliating against non-whites and Black Africans in particular. White-African laws were then expanded into the rigid, police-state-like system of Apartheid. By 1960, with African colonies becoming independent, the harsh racist principles and rhetoric of the Boers, all too reminiscent of Hitler, had grown into a global embarrassment. In 1961, the Union of South Africa was transformed into a Republic after being condemned at a Commonwealth Conference.
It left the Commonwealth under international scrutiny throughout the '60s, '70s, and '80s, until a peaceful transition to majority rule in 1994. Whether the new South Africa will remain peaceful is not entirely certain. Already with a very high crime rate, the precedent of neighboring Zimbabwe, with one-party rule and the increasing expropriation of white farms, usually by informal violence, the future, though better, was not reassuring.
