This study explores the contemporary democracy in South Africa three decades after the end of Apartheid. Based on the classical study provided by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996), the challenges to South Africa’s democracy are analyzed in the political, judicial, bureaucratic, economic and civil societies. Each society is important as a single-case study analysis, but they are also interrelated societies, together bringing deepened insights to the quality of democracy. It is argued that although the African National Congress (ANC) was once the promoter of democracy, its long-term political dominance has resulted in major hindrances for further democratization in the political, bureaucratic and economic societies, but with positive signs in the judicial and civil societies.