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It was, in truth, a long, ragged, violent process, quite unabetted by the supernatural. Before a vast and ecstatic audience that included forty-five heads of state, President Mandela declared, "Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud." For much of the world, the transformation of South Africa was clearly a moment of rare political transcendence.īut the South African revolution was neither quick nor peaceful nor magic. And on May 10, 1994, power was formally handed over to the elected representative of the South African majority, a man who had spent twenty-seven years in prison for his political beliefs. But then, through a sudden and remarkable confluence of forces and events, of far-sighted leaders and blind luck, the historic deadlock was broken. Only five years before, anyone suggesting that the peaceful abolition of white-minority rule was imminent would have been dismissed as naive. There simply didn't seem to be another word to describe the arrival of non-racial democracy in the land of apartheid. Surely the word "miraculous" was never more cruelly overworked by the world's journalists and politicians than in the weeks surrounding the election and inauguration of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela as the first black president of South Africa. Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1994.