Tlotlego Tsagae, from Orlando in Soweto, became a teenager on Friday, just like South Africa. On April 27, her heavily pregnant mother joined the long voting queues to make sure that the child she carried would be born under a democratically elected government.
"Signs were there that something would happen that night, but I went voting first, then to the clinic," she said.
Indeed that night at 9.45pm, Tlotlego was born at Diepkloof Clinic.
Tlotlego sees herself as a real "born-free" because "we have more rights now as children and everybody is equal".
Like most black children from Soweto she has never been in a class where there were only black children.
She speaks four official languages, and understands Afrikaans but can't speak it well. In fact, she isn't sure what the fuss was about Afrikaans because "it's another way of communicating, and on my last test I got only one thing wrong, I almost got 100 percent".
Although she is aware of the significance of her birth date, to her it's just another birthday.
"At school they told us it was when all the people of South Africa were allowed to vote and Nelson Mandela was free after 27 years. But I didn't do anything special, though my mom bought cake," she said shyly.
Tlotlego knows what black people went through in South Africa pre-1994.
"I think people were forced to learn in Afrikaans, and black and white people were separated because of their skin colour.
"My grandmother was moved from Sabie to here so that white people could live there. There were policemen everywhere and black people were watched all the time," she explained.
Tlotlego said she loved her country, and her favourite politician was the Minister of Education Naledi Pandor.
She is also pleased with what President Thabo Mbeki is doing but "he must try and teach other countries about South Africa because people have a wrong perception about the country.
"A group of children from our school went to America and they came back with stories like that we live among elephants here, so I think our president must start letting other countries know what we are all about."
Tlotlego doesn't know much about politics but she knows that "Jacob Zuma, who was at some point the deputy president, is in trouble.
"You know things happened with him, there was all this mix-up with him and for the whole year on TV it was just Zuma, Zuma, Zuma ?"
Like a true born-free, Tlotlego is an empowered girl who knows that she has rights, and when she grows up she wants to be "an artist, I want to do ceramics".