In Cities, Blacks March and Cheer to Celebrate Life-Altering Changes : Street scenes: ‘We are probably seeing history in the making,’ Archbishop Tutu says of De Klerk’s proposals.

Black taxi drivers honked horns and stopped traffic Friday and workers whistled to celebrate President Frederik W. de Klerk’s announcement of watershed political changes.

Blacks surged into the streets in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg at the news that the African National Congress and other organizations had been legalized and many national emergency restrictions lifted.

They streamed into the dusty roads of townships to cheer, and marched through a Cape Town train station chanting, “ANC! ANC!” while police watched passively.

“We are probably seeing history in the making in South Africa,” said Anglican Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, who could not stop smiling during a news conference.

“We had expected that Mr. De Klerk might deliver something, but what he said has certainly taken my breath away,” Tutu said.

Johannesburg whites stepped out of their shops to take photographs and smiled as hundreds of blacks danced and marched through downtown, waving banners and newspaper headlines that declared: “ANC Unbanned.”

Drivers stopped their cars in the street, honking their horns and punching their fists into the air. Black workers leaned out of office windows, whistling and shouting.

Police halted the march with a line of yellow patrol vehicles, chased some protesters and fired tear gas to disperse others. No injuries or arrests were reported, and many protesters laughed as they ran from the police.

In Cape Town, thousands of blacks banged placards against the fence around Parliament, chanting “ANC! ANC!” before De Klerk arrived to deliver his speech, which granted many of their demands.

The announcement of the legalization of the ANC was picked up on a car radio. The predominantly black crowd of 5,000 broke into cheers, whistles and more chants as recently freed anti-apartheid activist Popo Molefe relayed the news over a bullhorn from the back of a truck.

“We would be unreasonable if we failed to acknowledge that of all the presidents, of all the leaders of the Nationalist government, that in fact De Klerk has taken the most bold step and has emerged as the most courageous,” Molefe said.

“Mr. De Klerk, in his speech, has moved rather swiftly to meet most of the demands of the people,” said the Rev. Allan Boesak, the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. “These are clear, decisive steps that will undoubtedly, help to create a better atmosphere here.”

A black youth climbed atop a statue near Parliament of Jan Christiaan Smuts, a former South African prime minister, waving an ANC flag and brandishing a wooden model of an AK-47 automatic rifle, the symbol of the ANC’s military wing.

But police riot squads remained out of view and there were no confrontations as the crowd marched joyfully through Cape Town’s streets.

Scores of white policemen and white shopkeepers watched silently from the sidewalks, some shaking their heads.

Blacks and whites stood in groups with people reading the afternoon newspaper, whose headline said, “ANC Legalized.”

Street dancing broke out in downtown Durban as a group of black railway union members marched through the city center to a crescendo of cheers.

After dark, thousands of blacks paraded through the townships outside Cape Town, waving banners and singing hoarsely, while black men, women and children came to the doors of their tents or tin-roofed shanties to cheer.

Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned black nationalist leader Nelson R. Mandela, sounded a less-optimistic note as blacks marched in Cape Town. Saying that the black majority is not prepared to accept “a bone without meat,” she said, “This is not what we expected today. We expected him to tell us: Go to Victor Verster (prison) and fetch comrade Nelson.”

In Amherst, Mass., her daughter, Makaziwe Mandela-Amuah, 35, beamed at hearing the news from her homeland.

“The thing that really overjoyed me at 4 a.m. was the fact that my father’s release is definite,” she said at a news conference at the University of Massachusetts, where she is a Fulbright Scholar studying anthropology. “Even if it didn’t happen today, the thought that I will have a father back, that he will be a free man again, is very, very good news to me.”