I’m not too familiar with what happened back then.

There's a lot of myths flying around about what really happened back then... people still buy into the "but we avoided a civil war" trope, even though the prospects of a civil war was very, very low back then. It's a trope that was more associated with the '92 referendum than '94... or even reality. To be certain, there were people who definitely wanted a civil war - like the AWB-types and their cronies in the SAPS - but nobody that mattered was willing to engage in one.

So how do we change things.

The easiest way (though still very difficult and dangerous) that has historical precedent is to create a UDF (United Democratic Front) or MDM (Mass Democratic Movement) type broad coalition that can force the ANC to reverse course on it's neoliberal shitfuckery. That's easier said than done - and it's going to be difficult to do while avoiding the toxic hijacking attempts by our (so-called) "opposition parties," never mind the violent backlash such a coalition will face from the ANC itself.

The focus of the UDF and the MDM was on opposing Apartheid - this new coalition's focus should be in taking back our public infrastructure from the commercialisation and privatisation wringer it has been put through by not just the ANC but pretty much all the political racketeers squatting in parliament.

It's the only realistic way out that I can see - simply voting in another pack of political racketeers is going to end up producing more of the same. It's like Chomsky said - politics does not affect policy.