Twenty-five years after the first post-apartheid elections took place in South Africa, Pumla Gqola, a prominent feminist author in the country, shares her views on democracy with DW.
Author and activist Pumla Gqola was 21-years-old when the first post-apartheid elections were held in South Africa a quarter of a century ago. Now a professor of literature at Fort Hare University, the daughter of academics remembers her upbringing in apartheid Africa.
Walking on the streets as a black person meant being subject to random stops and searches and the constant threat of violence. The long car trips that she and her family would take to visit family would involve packed lunches eaten on the side of the road. As a child, it felt like an adventure, but as an adult she realized the sinister truth — black Africans were not allowed to eat at the restaurants they passed.
On the day of the first post-apartheid elections in 1994, Gquola remembers going to vote with her family. There was excitement at the prospect that slogans such as “liberation in our lifetime” could become a reality. Yet not everyone was convinced that the apartheid powers, with their vast economic resources, would concede so easily.
“I think those of us who really believed in the project that this was the right way to change this country, I think we under-estimated that critique that said too many compromises had been made,” Gqola told DW during a recent interview. Read more