This paper considers how the newfound social contract has been forged and the ways in which a sustainable contract remain elusive.

As South Africa prepares for general elections on May 8, the “beloved country” marks another milestone: its first 25 years post-apartheid.

The April 24-26, 1994, elections marked the first in which black South Africans, some 77% of the country’s population in that year, participated. The newly politically empowered African electorate swept into power the liberation African National Congress (ANC) and its iconic leader, Nobel peace laureate Nelson Mandela, as president. In the 1994 elections, the ANC won a handy 63% of the vote and the putatively liberationist party has won a similar comfortable majority of votes in subsequent general elections in 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014.