Nelson Mandela’s Inaugural Address, delivered on May 10, 1994, was a conciliatory, forward-looking celebration of the changes that had taken place in South Africa. Mandela, who had led the resistance to white rule and who had been imprisoned for that resistance from 1962 to 1990, became the first black man to become South Africa’s head of state. His inauguration as president of the Republic of South Africa was a triumphal celebration of the transition from apartheid rule to a democratic South Africa and from white minority rule to black majority rule.