The Four Years That Decided It

CHAPTER 11 · 1990–1994 · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994

Freeing Mandela was the easy part; the four years to 1994 were the hard one, and they came within a hair of failure. Watch the last charcoal country on the map: it does not flip cleanly to red, it is fought over. The negotiations — CODESA, the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (the marker) — were a chess match between a regime trying to entrench white vetoes and a movement demanding simple majority rule, conducted against a backdrop of appalling violence. Some of it was the “third force”: elements of the security state covertly arming and stoking township killing to derail the talks and

The turn: The election, 27 April 1994.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.