1994 — South Africa Comes Home

On June 1, 1994, South Africa was readmitted to the Commonwealth of Nations, ending thirty-three years of isolation that began when apartheid drove it out in 1961. The return came just weeks after the democratic elections that made Nelson Mandela president, and a country long treated as an outcast took its seat among nations again.

The return carried a clear meaning. The Harare Declaration's price of democracy had been paid, and the sanctions era crumbled almost overnight. What had separated South Africa from the world was not distance but a system, and when that system fell at the ballot box, the door opened with remarkable speed.