Freedom of expression during each president's tenure

Every president since 1991, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

#	President	In office	Total	Per year	Chart
1	Nelson Mandela	10 May 1994 – 14 Jun 1999	+38.8 points 1993 → 1998	+7.8 points/yr
2	Thabo Mbeki	14 Jun 1999 – 25 Sep 2008	+1.2 points 1998 → 2008	+0.1 points/yr
3	Cyril Ramaphosa	15 Feb 2018 – now	−0.6 points 2017 → 2025	−0.1 points/yr
4	Jacob Zuma	9 May 2009 – 15 Feb 2018	−2.7 points 2008 → 2017	−0.3 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · South Africa data · as of Oct 2026.