End of apartheid in South Africa
The first all-race election makes Mandela president
In April 1994 South Africa held its first elections open to citizens of all races. Nelson Mandela, who had spent 27 years in prison, became president. It ended apartheid, the decades-long system of racial segregation.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 14 years earlier
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 14 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 5 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 5 years earlier
- 1990 German reunification — 4 years earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — 3 years earlier
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 2 years earlier
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1980 Solidarity — 14 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 9 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 8 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 5 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 3 years earlier
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 15 years earlier
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 14 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 4 years earlier
Asia
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 19 years earlier
- 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — 5 years earlier
- 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo — 3 years earlier
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami — 10 years later
- 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — 17 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 25 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 24 years earlier
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 11 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 4 years earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 7 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 2 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 76)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 64)
- Mother Teresa (aged 84)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 83)
- Richard Nixon (aged 81)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 75)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 70)
- Fidel Castro (aged 68)
- Elizabeth II (aged 68)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 67)