S. Africa marks 100th anniversary of ANC
African National Congress supporters cheer before the start of their party's 100th anniversary celebrations in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on January 8, 2012.
South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) has wrapped up a weekend of celebrations to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the liberation movement that helped end the apartheid in the country.
A dozen African leaders and more former heads of state along with African kings and chieftains attended a Sunday night ceremony where President Jacob Zuma lit a flame, expected to stay alight the entire year, at the Wesleyan church where the ruling party he leads was born 100 years ago.
Addressing some 40,000 ANC supporters at the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein, Zuma celebrated ANC's achievement of leading South Africa into all-race freedom.
"The ANC mobilized the South African people across the racial, gender and class divide. The ANC, a disciplined force of the left with a bias toward the poor, is also a broad church that is home to all," he told the crowds.
Under legendary leadership of Nelson Mandela (1918 - ), Walter Sisulu (1912 - 2003) and Oliver Tambo (1917 - 1993), who endured persecution and imprisonment, the ANC gained near-mythical status during the three-decade long freedom struggle.
Founded to fight discrimination, Africa's oldest liberation movement was banned by South Africa's white apartheid rulers in 1960, and its leaders were jailed four years later.
Mandela, who was absent from the three-day festivities because of his frailty, was jailed for 27 years by the racist white regime and his organization was declared a terrorist group by apartheid South Africa's close ally, the United States.
After a long struggle, the ANC finally ended apartheid white-minority rule in 1994 in South Africa and a multi-racial democracy was introduced in the country with Mandela chosen as its first black president after more than three centuries of white rule.
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