2014 — South Africa's Born Frees Vote

On May 7, 2014, South Africans voted in their fifth democratic general election, the first in which the born frees, those born after apartheid, could vote. A generation that had never lived under the old laws now stood in line to choose the country's leaders for the first time.

The ANC under Jacob Zuma took 62 percent and 249 seats. Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters, formed only eight months earlier, stormed into parliament as the third party. The electoral commission declared the polls free and fair. In that simple verdict, and in those first ballots, a new generation had spoken and been counted.