South Africa's decade of freedom: in the 10 years since the end of apartheid, South Africa has come a long way. But this young democracy still faces many challenges.

• Author: Wines, Michael
• Position: International

"See this yard?" Tom Shiburi waves his hand toward a sprawling field of weeds in the township of Diepkloof (DEEP-kloof), close to downtown Johannesburg. "We used to have some shacks here," he says. "Five thousand shacks--our last count came to something like 10,000 people. They've been relocated, all of them."

Shiburi is talking about the changes in the decade since South Africa abolished apartheid and embraced democracy. Under apartheid (the government-run system that forcibly segregated blacks from whites and denied blacks basic rights), South Africa's white rulers herded millions of blacks into townships like Diepkloof, where they lived in tiny houses or in iron shacks, many without electricity or water.

But since South Africa's black majority came to power in 1994, the government has built and given 1.5 million homes to former shanty dwellers--evidence of the transformation that has swept this nation in a blink of history's eye.

In the past decade, 40 million black and mixed race South Africans have set aside more than a century of oppression and made peace with the 5 million whites whose government literally kept them prisoners in their own land.

BALLOT POWER

In 1994, blacks and whites went to the polls to elect a new government in one of the 20th century's most respiring civic exercises. Some feared a racial bloodbath when white rule ended, with blacks taking revenge for past deprivations and injustices. Instead, they embraced their new political power, with nearly 90 percent of those eligible casting ballots. And they have continued to turn out in throngs for elections in 1999 and, again, last April.

There is now a future for blacks where none existed. Honeyboy Khoza, 21, from Pimville, a township outside Johannesburg, is just graduating from high school this year.

"I was lazy," he says. "There was no potential in township schools; they didn't care if you failed." But today, Khoza is so intent on finishing high school and finding a job in technology that he has given up his passion, soccer, to study for finals. "Now, if you're hardworking, you get opportunities," he says. "We've still got a long way to go--everybody knows that. But I think things will keep getting better."

For blacks, apartheid's demise ended more than three centuries of steadily rising oppression that began in the colonial era. The Dutch first settled at Cape Town in 1652, and they soon began imposing restrictions on blacks. When the British took control of Cape Town in 1814, they outlawed torture and also restored some rights to blacks. In the meantime, conflicts between the British and the Dutch, called Afrikaners, continued.

THE ROOTS OF APARTHEID

When Britain finally defeated...