ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 11, 1996 TAG: 9612110031
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SHARPEVILLE, SOUTH AFRICA
SOURCE: Associated Press
With the stroke of a pen, President Nelson Mandela signed South Africa's new constitution into law Tuesday. Then he hoisted it over his head, to the cheers of 4,000 people at a ramshackle soccer stadium.
The 150-page charter was the culmination of more than six years of negotiations between white and black leaders on the shape and ideology of post-apartheid South Africa.
``By our presence here today, we solemnly honor the pledge we made to ourselves and to the world, that South Africa shall redeem herself and thereby widen the frontiers of human freedom,'' Mandela said.
``As we close a chapter of exclusion and a chapter of heroic struggle, we reaffirm our determination to build a society of which each of us can be proud as South Africans, as Africans and as citizens of the world.''
The signing date - Tuesday - and the place - Sharpeville, a black township south of Johannesburg - were not accidental.
Sharpeville was where police gunned down 69 black protesters in 1960, galvanizing the anti-apartheid movement. The township also is part of Vereeniging city, where the treaty ending the Anglo-Boer war was signed in 1902 to set up the present-day borders of South Africa.
The constitution, written in two years by an elected Constitutional Assembly, is one of the most liberal in the world.
It is based on an interim document that took effect with the nation's first all-race election in 1994, won by Mandela's African National Congress, and includes a Bill of Rights.
``We are making a clear break with the past - a break with pain, a break with betrayal,'' said Cyril Ramaphosa, the African National Congress leader who headed the Constitutional Assembly. ``We have a constitution we can be proud of. It is our task to make it work.''
Under the charter, South Africans have the right to adequate housing, food, water, education and health care - all of which were mostly denied the black majority in the apartheid era.
It also bans discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, pregnancy or marital status.
- The Washington Post contributed to this report.
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