South Africans celebrate their “Freedom Day” every April 27.
WorldFILE - People queue to cast their votes In Soweto, South Africa April 27, 1994, in the country's first all-race elections. South Africans celebrate"Freedom Day" every April 27, when they remember their country's pivotal first democratic elections in 1994 that announced the official end of the racial segregation and oppression of apartheid.
South Africa needed years to prepare and was still on a knife-edge in the months and weeks before the election because of ongoing political violence, but the vote — held over four days between April 26 and April 29 to accommodate the large numbers who turned out — went ahead successfully. Associated Press photographer Denis Farrell's iconic aerial photograph of people waiting patiently for hours in long, snaking queues in fields next to a school in the famed Johannesburg township of Soweto captured the determination of millions of Black South Africans to finally be counted. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Apartheid, which began in 1948 and lasted for nearly half-a-century, had oppressed Black and other non-white people through a series of race-based laws. Not only did the laws deny them a vote, they controlled where Black people lived, where they were allowed to go on any given day, what jobs they were allowed to hold and who they were allowed to marry.
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