Mandela Signs New Constitution

With the stroke of a pen, President Nelson Mandela signed South Africa’s new constitution into law. Then he hoisted it over his head, to the cheers of 4,000 people at a ramshackle soccer stadium in the black township of Sharpeville. 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. The date and place of the signing ceremony were chosen because Tuesday was International Human Rights Day, and Sharpeville was where police gunned down 69 black protesters in a 1960 massacre that galvanized the anti-apartheid movement.