Since 1994, South Africa underwent three national elections with remarkable success free from incidents that often mar elections in much of Africa.

In spite of the fact that the country was under a peculiar form of racialist tyrannical rule before the coming to power of the democratically elected Government in 1994, it has managed to surprise the rest of the world by the way the citizens continue to express peacefully and with strong civic engagement and expression their democratic rights by going to the polls by standing for long hours in long lines with discipline and calm decency to express their voices, make choices and to cast their secret ballots to vote with record numbers.

On April 22, 2009, for the third time, they did it again! They expressed their voices. They made their choices. Finally they cast their ballot papers and voted after hearing spirited campaign debates, discussions and even heated exchanges that would lead in other places to diversionary cantankerous personalized quarrels including possibly leading to bouts of violence… [MORE]