From Union to Democracy

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Four dates matter to the question of when South Africa truly became the country it is today, and each answers a different part of it. 1910 is when the Union of South Africa formed, joining four British colonies into one self-governing dominion, though still under the British crown and, for its Black majority, under no meaningful political rights at all. 1931 is when the Statute of Westminster gave the Union full legislative sovereignty equal to Britain's own, ending the last formal colonial subordination while leaving the domestic racial order untouched. 1961 is when a republic was declared, cutting the last constitutional tie to the British monarchy, again without extending the franchise. Only 1994, with the country's first election open to citizens of every race, ending the apartheid system that had governed since 1948, produced a South Africa whose government could claim to represent the whole population it governed. This atlas records 1910 as the founding of the unified state, but the honest history of South African independence is really the history of all four dates together.