There were loud cheers when President Cyril Ramaphosa took the podium and spoke from the heart, acknowledging his and his party's failures and his acceptance of the results of the election.

Dear DM168 reader,

Thirty years after Nelson Mandela stood at the Union Buildings as the first president of a democratic South Africa, I found myself attending my first inauguration at the same venue, Sir Herbert Baker's spectacular rendition of Africa's Acropolis built and crafted from the sandstone and earth of surrounding koppies to signify the union of English and Afrikaans white South Africans.

As a member of the Press Council of South Africa, I was one of the invited guests to the inauguration of the first President of another type of union, a coalition government of national unity fashioned after Mandela's party, the African National Congress, lost its majority for the first time in three decades.

Walking up the stairs to the Union Buildings I was struck by three things. First, on the distant hills was a stark reminder of how far we have come - the monolithic granite slab of the Voortrekker Monument, adjacent to the flags of Freedom Park.

Then I was struck by the words engraved on the steps of the Union Buildings; the words of the 20,000 women of all races who marched to this building, protesting the grave injustice of the...