One of the first votes I ever cast was the one in which I got to help decide whether a marginalised group of people should have the same rights as me.
It was March 1992. I was a young, white, enfranchised South African working as a journalist at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. A couple of years earlier I had interviewed F. W. de Klerk, then Minister for National Education and Planning, and just months away from being sworn in as state president. He struck me as a man of moral conviction, one who was not willing to be held hostage by an old guard clinging in vain to its conservative ideology.
The referendum was one of the methodical steps taken by de Klerk in the dismantling of apartheid: the ban on anti-apartheid groups (including the ANC) had been lifted, Nelson Mandela had been released from prison, the group areas act had been abolished and the government had started negotiating with the ANC for a peaceful resolution to its armed insurgence.
Undermining these efforts was the Conservative Party which had, until now, exercised much power in marshalling voters' anti-egalitarian sentiment. Apartheid had taken root in their Calvinist dogma; God had ordained white people as superiors, they believed, and had designated black people (and those of mixed race) the 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' as described in the scriptures. An end to apartheid would be an assault on their religious freedom, and on God's will. De Klerk's reforms infuriated them.
But the electorate was getting restless: it was time for change and they knew it. De Klerk's YES campaign promoted the ideals of peace and equality; NO supporters warned of civil war and chaos and communist rule. Of course none of these things eventuated: the YES campaign won, with a massive voter turnout returning an almost 70 per cent vote in favour of reform.
On the day of the referendum, I cast my vote at a school in my childhood neighbourhood alongside other white constituents. We were among a minority of around 12 per cent of the country's population, and the only ones allowed to vote. Then I went back to work, to report on the referendum. It was thrilling to be part of this historic event as both participant and observer. A year later, de Klerk and Mandela jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize, and a year after that South Africa held its