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South Africa is going to the polls thirty years after millions of black South Africans were able to vote for the first time, in 1994, marking the end of the apartheid system of racial segregation. That vote put Nelson Mandela in power as head of the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC has been the governing party ever since. Over the next few days, that may change as there is the real chance of the party losing its majority. Seth Mazibuko is an anti-apartheid activist who helped organise the student-led Soweto uprisings of 1976. He later became one of the youngest prisoners on Robben Island, alongside Nelson Mandela. He told us, “We can now put the cross, we can now vote, that is the biggest of achievements in the struggle against apartheid”. However, he also said, “The question comes: have we really, as black people in South Africa, had the fruit of the tree?” He said the number of parties standing in the election is surprising and this speaks to the strength South Africa’s democracy, as well as the number of issues the country faces.