Mandela Scolds Gun-Toting Supporters at Rally : Elections: Candidate says ANC is committed to controlling firearms in South Africa. Meanwhile, President De Klerk makes last-ditch appeal for votes.

It was supposed to be a speech about sacrifice and struggle, about ending a long journey and starting another. Instead, Nelson Mandela was furious.

At a campaign rally in South Africa’s largest black township Saturday, the gray-haired president of the African National Congress and all-but-certain next president of South Africa was greeted with the rattle and roar of guns being fired into the bright blue sky.

The crowd of 60,000 cheered wildly as the impromptu salute of shots echoed for several minutes across the vast soccer stadium. But an open microphone caught Mandela complaining angrily to someone on the makeshift stage: “I asked you to frisk everybody here. Nobody should come in here with weapons!”

Moments later, as the gunfire subsided, Mandela chastised his supporters. “It is clear that criminality, even among members of the African National Congress, is deep-seated,” he thundered.

Saying that the ANC is committed to gun control, he added: “It is quite clear our organization has been penetrated by criminals. . . . If I find out the people who are firing these guns, I have no alternative but to expel them from the organization. We do not want them!”

Mandela has tried to rein in his more militant supporters since his release from 27 years in prison in 1990, as the constitutionally entrenched racism of apartheid began to crumble.

Now, with his victory virtually assured when the country’s black majority votes for the first time in three days of elections that start Tuesday, Mandela faces the heavier burden of governing a fractious society awash in assault rifles and steeped in a culture of violence.

The death throes of white minority rule have claimed more than 13,000 lives in the last four years, largely in brutal clashes between rival members of the ANC and Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party.

Two ANC members distributing campaign literature were killed Saturday in Ulundi, the capital of KwaZulu, the Zulu homeland that Buthelezi controls. The men were reportedly shot and their bodies burned after an angry crowd surrounded a dozen ANC workers. The survivors took refuge in a police station.

KwaZulu and surrounding Natal province are under a state of emergency, and violence has fallen sharply since Buthelezi dropped a lengthy boycott and joined the race last week. He cut short his campaigning and rushed back to the volatile capital after the killings.

In Cape Town, President Frederik W. de Klerk wrapped up his long-shot campaign, making apologies for the past and promises for the future to a foot-stomping, singing and cheering crowd of mostly mixed-race Colored supporters.

“Yes, we made mistakes,” De Klerk told 10,000 people packed into the Good Hope Center, an auditorium built on the former site of District Six.

That thriving multiracial community was destroyed by the all-white National Party government three decades ago because it was in a “white area.” Many of its residents were forced at gunpoint into crowded townships.

“But we have rectified our mistakes. And we have made this the best country in Africa under National Party rule,” De Klerk said. “We know how to build, and we will continue to build with your help.”

The supporters, bused in from Colored townships as far as 60 miles away, sported T-shirts, visors and buttons bearing De Klerk’s likeness. About 1,000 people were turned away from the packed auditorium. Inside, the president was interrupted again and again by enthusiastic applause and chants.

De Klerk chose the Western Cape, one of nine new provinces, for his final rally because polls show it is the only province the National Party is likely to win. Colored voters are in the majority there, and many support De Klerk despite the injustices of apartheid.

Many Colored voters fear they will suffer even more under a black-led government, perhaps losing the privileges they have had in jobs and housing.

“De Klerk is the only person who stands for us,” said Anthony Kleinbooi, 25, from the Colored community of Belhar. “Mandela stands only for his people. He’s black, and he’s for his people.”

De Klerk arrived holding the hand of his wife, Marike, in one of her rare public appearances in the area. The ANC has repeatedly reminded Colored voters of a remark she made several years ago that Coloreds, being neither black nor white, were non-persons.

“We ask a mandate in this election, and we promise you that never again will there be racial discrimination on one inch of the soil of South Africa,” De Klerk said.

His speech was briefly disrupted by a white heckler, who scuffled with Colored supporters. But the president intervened, using the interruption to remind his listeners of the intimidation that he contends ANC supporters use.

“Please don’t hurt the man,” he said. “We are a party of peace. Just lead him out of here. That’s the way the National Party deals with people. We take them out quietly, but we don’t kill them.” The heckler was ushered from the hall without incident.

De Klerk, running for reelection to the office he won four years ago in whites-only elections, has no public appearances scheduled today, the last day on which campaigning is allowed. Mandela will hold his final rally in Durban.