Sibonisile Tshabalala was only 18 days old when her mother Thandeka Sidya left her with her grandmother Roseline, in the Johannesburg township of Katlehong.

But she was not heading to a menial job in an office or restaurant in the city center. On April 27, 1994, Thandeka Sidaya wanted to be at the polls when they opened at 8 a.m., to cast her vote for the man whose fearless activism and 27-year imprisonment toppled a legal and economic system that had brutalized non-white South Africans for almost half a century, and fueled decades of international condemnation and protest. Thandeka stood in line for hours, submitted her ballot for Nelson Mandela as first black president of South Africa, and then returned to