A Joyous Occasion That Knows No Nation’s Boundaries : Civil rights: This week’s historic elections in South Africa have people celebrating the power of the vote--both there and here.

The discussion in the living room of Mathabo Kunene’s View Park home was typical of infant organizations: Who telephones supporters? Who designs the flyers? What’s listed on the calendar of events?

But it is an atypical cause that has united this group of artists, professionals, clergymen, students and social activists--one of historic proportions. They have banded together in hopes of galvanizing Angelenos to mark the birth of democracy this week in South Africa. The country’s first all-race elections will be held Tuesday through Thursday.

“This is a very significant event in the history of this continent,” said Kunene, a South African who has spent the last 19 years in Los Angeles. “So I don’t want it to just go away and be defined by the mainstream media as a violent place.”

Every Tuesday evening since early March, Kunene and more than a dozen black Angelenos and South Africans have toiled over logistics and strategies to bring their plan to fruition. They have christened themselves the Countdown to Freedom Coalition.

Members of the coalition say they understand the tensions and violence that threaten this week’s vote, but they want to highlight the flip side of the political clashes and bloodshed that make the headlines and the 6 o’clock news.

“Nobody has focused on the millions of South Africans who are excited about these elections,” said Kunene, 54.

“No one has focused either on the number of African Americans, and all Americans, who have made sacrifices and supported our struggle in South Africa for so many years,” she added. “These people are traveling to South Africa now to act as (election) monitors to continue their support. We must recognize this.”

Coalition members have spent countless volunteer hours writing editorials for local black newspapers and arranging events that include the dissemination of information on voter education workshops for black South Africans, a candlelight vigil Tuesday in the West Adams district, and audio and video feeds from South Africa that can be heard on KPFK-FM (90.7) and seen at the Kaos Network--a film and video workshop in Leimert Park.

In addition to calling attention to the upcoming elections, the coalition is trying to use the situation abroad to motivate African Americans here to vote. Hence the group’s motto: “The Power of the Vote . . . from Soweto to South-Central.”

“We in South-Central cannot look at South Africans and not see ourselves, from the color of our skin to the hurdles that we’ve scaled to get where we are,” said Estella Holeman, 34, special events coordinator of the California Afro-American Museum and a member of the coalition.

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The catalyst behind the Countdown to Freedom Coalition is Mathabo Kunene.

“I always liked to make trouble,” she said, reflecting on her life in South Africa.

One of five children, Kunene, of Sotho nationality, grew up in the Myanga township outside Cape Town.

She was swept up in the struggle to dismantle apartheid as a teen-ager, watching friends being hauled off to Robben Island, the stale, dank prison 30 miles off Cape Town, and seeing her township go up in flames during the 1960 Sharpeville rebellion.

“When L.A. was in the civil unrest, it was like I was back in South Africa. There was no difference,” Kunene said.

Her former junior high school teacher, Mazisi Kunene, a Zulu, nine years her senior and active in the ANC youth movement, was her inspiration. His work with the ANC eventually forced him to flee South Africa in 1955. He moved to London, where he started an ANC chapter.

The couple stayed in touch over the years. Mathabo Kunene moved to London in 1973 and they were married the same year. Two years later, they moved to Los Angeles.

Mazisi Kunene returned to South Africa last year, after 18 years of teaching linguistics, African languages and his own brand of politics at UCLA. Mathabo Kunene has continued to do what she does best: rabble rouse.

Within two days of deciding that something needed to be done in Los Angeles to mark the elections in her homeland, she was on the phone, starting a feverish chain of calls to anti-apartheid activists.

Within a week, she had corralled the coalition’s core into her home, a haven over the years for dozens of South African exiles and students studying in the United States.

“I’m not afraid to start things, because if you don’t start it, how will it get done?” Kunene said.

“I want people in the African American community to look at South Africa and realize the importance of this vote to us, of the power it will give us. And then for them to realize the power they already have had for years,” she said.

The spirit of South Africa pervades Kunene’s home, the site of all but one of the coalition’s organizing meetings. Visitors might overhear her speaking to her son in Zulu. During meetings, the circle of members in her living room sit among brilliant Ndebele) and Zulu neckbands and matrimonial waist-ties, sculptures and South African books and magazines.

But despite all her hard work--and the work of others--to dismantle apartheid, Kunene never thought she would live to see the day when she would vote in her country.

With that chance ahead of her, Kunene returned to her homeland for a two-month visit on last week, where she will vote for the first time.

All the coalition members have been active in the anti-apartheid cause.

When she was a student at Howard University in the ‘70s, Estella Holeman said there wasn’t a day that she didn’t hear something about the inequities in Southern Africa, including Namibia and Zimbabwe.

“I remember Robert Mugabe visiting Howard and saying, ‘Brothers and sisters, come home,’ ” Holeman said. “And I was ready to go.”

Working as a researcher for KCBS in the early ‘80s, Holeman made contacts in the local South Africa community, and that’s how she met the Kunenes.

While attending seminary school in New York City in 1983, Madison Shockley stood with other anti-apartheid activists on the steps of the South African Consulate, arms raised in solidarity for those oppressed in a country more than 7,000 miles away. It was a protest he repeated a few times, without being arrested.

Today, as pastor of the Church of Christian Fellowship in Mid-City, he will host the coalition’s culminating event, a dinner and artistic presentation Friday to celebrate the elections and acknowledge the second anniversary of the Los Angeles riots.

“Ten years ago, who would’ve thought Nelson Mandela would’ve become South Africa’s next president?” Shockley asked. “To have felt the despair for all these years you want to enjoy the euphoria.”

Cynthia Robbins, an attorney with Public Counsel, a public interest law firm, started her anti-apartheid work as an undergrad at Harvard. She has continued over the years as a member of the National Council of Black Lawyers and will be an election observer in South Africa.

“There is a history of dedication to freedom in South Africa in this community, and for an event so significant as this election, there was no way we could allow that to pass without a comprehensive celebration,” she said.

Even if the coalition does not achieve everything within its ambitious agenda, Robbins and others in the group said they will be satisfied with their attempt.

“The struggle in South Africa is an encouragement to anyone in terms of self-determination and perseverance,” Robbins said. “If this coalition succeeds in infusing that belief in African Americans, in anyone, in getting them to rise to the occasion for South Africa and for themselves, then we’ve been successful.”