Back in April 1994, the world watched a remarkable event: South Africa’s first democratic election with universal suffrage. The country whose Apartheid system had legalized racial segregation since the late 1940s went to the polls and elected a new national assembly. In turn, that assembly picked a Black president: Nelson Mandela, who, after decades in prison, became the South Africa’s new leader. Those events were a major part of the global 1990s-era shift toward democratic rule. But in recent years, critics have increasingly questioned the success of South Africa’s democracy,…
