In June, power is scheduled to be transferred from one democratically-elected president to another.
Mandela was inaugurated as the country's first democratically-elected president on Tuesday, ending more than 300 years of white-minority rule.
He was Venezuela's first democratically-elected president to serve his full term, and was succeeded by Raúl Leoni.
In this episode, a democratically-elected president comes to power in Latin America.
It would be sad if ill-health were to deprive him of the chance to become the first democratically-elected president of South Africa.
But since its first democratically-elected president took power in 1992, it has had a civilian government and enjoyed relative political stability.
For the first time since the country gained independence, in 1960, a democratically-elected president could have hoped to succeed another.
In January 1848 he again supported the far-left proposal according to which the new, united Germany was to be led by a democratically-elected president.
The country has entered a new era with its first democratically-elected president.
In 1991, the military in Haiti ousted the country's first democratically-elected president in a violent coup.