S. Africans Cast Historic Votes : Election: Hospital patients, the disabled and retirees flock to polls in high spirits on first day. A bomb explodes at Johannesburg’s international airport.

Democracy dawned with a flourish across South Africa on Tuesday as hospital patients, pensioners, the disabled and other “special voters” flocked to this country’s first all-race polls in unexpectedly high numbers and remarkably good spirits.

The opening day of the historic three-day election for the post-apartheid government was marred by widespread confusion and hundreds of complaints of logistic problems and technical glitches at urban and rural polling stations. These included missing ballots, late starts and long lines.

In a resurgence of violence apparently aimed at disrupting the watershed election, an explosion rocked the international departures hall at Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts Airport today, wounding at least three people, police said.

“There was an explosion on the second floor of the international departures hall. . . . Three people have been injured,” said Col. Jan Myburgh, according to the Reuters news agency.

The blast is the latest in a series of bombings that have killed 21 people and kept South Africa on edge since the weekend.

But there was no major poll violence on Tuesday. Sick and elderly black voters who have waited all their lives to cast a ballot began lining up before dawn in cities, towns and townships across the nation. Some were carried in blankets and wheelbarrows. Many waited as long as eight hours under the baking sun in columns that extended for more than half a mile.

Far more voters showed up than were anticipated, officials said, although no official count was available.

The vast majority of the 22.7 million eligible voters--including up to 18 million first-time black voters--will cast ballots at 9,000 heavily guarded polling stations today and Thursday. It remains to be seen if the glitches that dogged Tuesday’s balloting will become nightmarish obstacles and lead to violence under a flood of voters.

Here in the country’s largest black township, patients at the sprawling Baragwanath Hospital, one of the biggest hospitals in Africa, hobbled in on crutches, rolled up in wheelchairs and marched up in tattered bathrobes and threadbare pajamas to vote.

“I never thought this day would come,” said a beaming Mary Lele, 72, clutching her grandson’s arm as she walked slowly, but with pride, to cast her first ballot. “I’m very happy.”

Ruth Mashaba, 73, carried her 2-year-old granddaughter in a red sling on her back. “I want her to see freedom,” she said with a toothless smile.

Lettie Mogatwe, 42, rode in a wheelchair, her broken left leg in a new cast. Despite the pain, she grinned with delight when she left the polling booth. “I think it’s the end of apartheid,” she said. “We’ll not be oppressed anymore. . . . We’ll all be equal.”

But not all the first day’s 2,219 fixed and mobile polling stations were equal.

In the Zulu strongholds of KwaZulu and Natal, a plan to deliver special stickers to attach to the ballots for supporters of Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party apparently went awry. Scores of polling booths did not receive the stickers, or got them late in the day, leaving thousands of disappointed and angry voters in one of the country’s most volatile areas.

Buthelezi, who only last week dropped his militant boycott of the elections, called for an extension of the three-day voting period to alleviate the problem. “I’m extremely, extremely worried,” Buthelezi told reporters.

He also complained hourly to the head of the Independent Electoral Commission, Judge Johann Kriegler. At an evening news conference, Kriegler said the voting could not be extended but acknowledged that the commission had been overwhelmed on its first day of voting.

“In a nutshell, the picture is far from perfect, but much, much further from disastrous,” he said. But Kriegler, who has labored from the campaign’s start to gloss over allegations of inefficiency and disorganization in the election preparations, called the day a “godsend.”

“We had a trial run today and picked up a large number of bugs and hitches and glitches,” he said.

IEC Commissioner Ben van der Ross said the worst problems were in three areas. “Very serious shortages” of election materials were reported in Transkei, he said. Communications had broken down in northern Transvaal. And several tribal chiefs had tried to “take the law into their own hands and commandeer the polling stations” in Natal, he said. Allegations of fraud were reported in several areas, but none was substantiated.

Reports from other areas around the country were also worrisome. Voting was delayed for up to eight hours because of missing ballots or equipment in the mining town of Kimberly, while voting at Durban General Hospital did not begin until midafternoon.

Polling was also delayed up to seven hours in townships in the East Rand and along the coast in Port Elizabeth and Port Shepstone. Only ballots for the National Assembly arrived in parts of Newcastle, although voters must mark another ballot for provincial legislatures.

Officials reported tension at two prisons after voting was delayed until the afternoon. And the boat carrying election officials and ballot papers to Robben Island, the infamous prison that once was home to Nelson Mandela, broke down in Cape Town Harbor. The 700 prisoners voted later.

South Africans in 80 countries around the world were also able to vote. Mandela’s niece Nomoza Patin was the first to cast a ballot, by virtue of her location in Wellington, New Zealand, which is closest to the international dateline. “It means a restoration of dignity . . . for every South African person,” she told news services of her vote.

In Johannesburg, African National Congress spokesman Pallo Jordan told a news conference that the first day of voting had been rockier than expected. “We aren’t that shocked by it, although we are dismayed by it,” he said.

Still, enthusiasm and a sense of forgiving seemed the order of the day for a people finally able to choose their own leaders and rule their own land.

“It is an incredible feeling, like falling in love,” gushed Anglican Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his outspoken campaign against apartheid. He will vote today.

Frederik W. de Klerk, who will trade his job as Africa’s last white head of state for one as deputy executive vice president under Mandela, said he had no regrets about freeing Mandela from prison in 1990 and starting the transition from apartheid to democracy. “I wanted this election to take place. . . . That is what I have been working for,” he said as he escorted his 89-year-old mother, Corrie, to vote in Pretoria.

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At the Ballot Box

Democracy has arrived in South Africa, with a three-day nationwide election. For the first time, all South Africans over age 18 are eligible to vote.

The choices: Voters will select the party that best represents their views. A 400-member National Assembly will be chosen based on those votes. The party with the most votes will choose its leader as president of the country.

The major parties

The ANC: The largest black-dominated political group in South Africa. It is expected to score an overwhelming victory under its leader is Nelson Mandela.

National Party: In power since 1948 and all-white until 1990, it appears headed for a secondary role in national politics. The party is headed by Frederik W. de Klerk.

Inkatha Freedom Party: The Zulu nationalist party has emerged as the main rival to the ANC. It is closely tied to the Zulu monarchy and claims to represent 8.5 million Zulus, the nation’s largest ethnic group.

Eligible voters Black: 69% White: 19% Mixed race: 10% Asian: 3% Does not add up to 100% because of rounding

Sources: South African Institute for Race Relations, Reuters, Times staff