PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela yesterday signed into law a new constitution for South Africa, legally entrenching racial equality and consigning apartheid to history.
In a highly symbolic stroke President Mandela signed the blueprint for democracy in his "rainbow nation" in Sharpeville where 69 black demonstrators were killed by police in 1960 plunging South Africa into international ignominy.
"Out of the many Sharpevilles which haunt our history was born the unshakable determination that respect for human life, liberty and well-being must be enshrined as rights beyond the power of any force to diminish," Mr Mandela said in his speech.
The ceremony was the culmination of more than five years of talks between his African National Congress (ANC) and the National Party of former the president, Mr F.W. de Klerk.
Mr Mandela, the country's first black president, said the document would take South Africans over a critical threshold. "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," he said.
Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, chairman of the Constitutional Assembly which ushered the document through parliament, told thousands of blacks gathered at the Sharpeville stadium for the signing that the ceremony marked the end of a 350-year struggle for unity.
"Today marks the legal transition to a constitution that represents the will of the overwhelming majority of the people of this country. It's one law for one nation he said.
Inviting Mr Mandela to sign the constitution into law, he said the constitution would separate the new South Africa from the old.
"Never again will courts rubber stamp, or stand helplessly by, while unjust laws are made to take away people's rights, to detain and torture and deny them their dignity. Now judges can be champions of the people," Mr Ramaphosa said.
Earlier hundreds gathered amid heavy security to watch Mr Mandela lay a wreath and unveil a monument commemorating the Sharpeville massacre.
A South African flag was draped over the monument of rocks in thee middle of an open piece of land where the demonstrators were shot by police three and a half decades ago. "We just heard the shooting that day, and we kept away. We just ran," Ms Miriam Teletsane (64), said. "Then the rain came, and the streets were awash with blood," added Mr Abdul Maseru.
Mr Mandela vowed South Africa would now become a true democracy: "By our presence here today, we solemnly honour the pledge we made to ourselves and to the world that South Africa shall redeem herself and thereby widen the frontiers of human freedom."
After Sharpeville white-ruled South Africa shook its fist at a horrified world and retreated into isolation for another 30 years of minority rule.
. South Africa's truth commission yesterday pardoned one of apartheid's most notorious killer policemen in a decision likely to test the limits of national reconciliation. A former policeman, Mr Brian Mitchell, who is serving a 30-year sentence for the murder of 11 people in December 1988, was granted amnesty by Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
This is the first amnesty decision in favour of a former security force member," said a commission spokesman, Mr John Allen.