Pride Marks Peaceful S. African Voting

Nelson Mandela and millions of other South Africans voted for the first time in their lives Wednesday, a day that seemed to miraculously turn violence and fear into pride and hope across this long-divided land.

From squatter camp to rich suburb, from white town to black township, voters of all races lined up together to embrace democracy and destroy apartheid in a rare display of racial harmony. More important, they came in such swarms on the second day of the three-day elections as to overwhelm an obviously inadequate voting operation.

Delays of six hours or longer were common, worsened because of a breakdown of the system used to deliver voting materials to the polls. Numerous voting stations opened hours late when ballots, ink or boxes failed to arrive. And other stations never opened at all. As a result, officials said one in five voters was unable to vote or gave up and went home in frustration.

By day’s end, the Independent Electoral Commission said voting would go on as late into the night as necessary. More than 9 million extra ballots were also being printed for when polls reopen today.

Yet in a day of historic firsts, perhaps the most remarkable was this: Not a single election-related death, and not a single case of intimidation or violence at the nearly 10,000 polls, was reported in a nation where political murder and mayhem often seem a way of life.

Indeed, police said the only known problems were in several rural areas where frustrated blacks broke down the doors of closed polling stations to try to vote. The police, who once battled township residents opposed to white rule, guarded each polling booth with automatic weapons to protect the voters.

Not even an argument was heard in visits to 10 packed polling stations in the Johannesburg area. They ranged from the war-torn township of Thokoza to the leafy white neighborhoods of Sandton. And every single station had queues that snaked outside for up to a mile in the broiling sun.

Patience and optimism was the order of the day. Some obviously grumbled, but many more smiled. The mood was festive, with hawkers selling cold drinks and families camped on lawn chairs. Some voters even argued that the endless wait demonstrated the country’s new commitment to democracy.

“People have waited their whole lives to vote,” said a grinning Trish Burrus, who waited five hours to cast her ballot in Illovo. “What’s one more day?”

Officials said they could not say how many of the 22.7 million eligible voters, including up to 18 million first-time black voters, had actually gone to the polls to elect the first post-apartheid government.

The day began with news of an early explosion outside the international arrivals hall at Jan Smuts International Airport here. The third car bomb in four days injured 18 people and caused heavy damage to the terminal. But even that bad news was overshadowed. Police announced the arrests of 31 white extremists on charges of planting terrorist bombs that killed 21 people Sunday and Monday in downtown Johannesburg, Germiston and Pretoria.

Gen. Johan van der Merwe, the police commissioner, said the suspects, who include members of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, hoped to intimidate voters.

“The purpose was to derail the election process,” he said.

It obviously did not work. Mandela, the lionized leader of black resistance to white rule, cast his ballot at a school in Inanda outside Durban. Almost sure to become the country’s first black president, the head of the African National Congress said voting was the fulfillment of a dream.

“It is the beginning of a new era,” Mandela told reporters. “It is a realization of our hopes and dreams--the dreams of a South Africa that represents all South Africans.”

First-time black voters began lining up, huddled under blankets, as early as 3 a.m. at churches, community halls, schools and other polling stations in Soweto, the township that symbolized the anti-apartheid movement after the 1976 uprising.

A thousand or so people were already in line at 7 a.m., the scheduled start of voting, at the Union Congregational Church in Soweto’s Orlando East area. They circled the huge church compound when the polls actually opened 45 minutes late. They soon stretched far down the dusty road.

“Now I am free!” cried one of the first voters, Selina Pelo, 65, clapping her hands with delight. She folded her ballot neatly, held it in two hands like a sacrament and stuffed it into the tin box. “I thank God he let me live long enough to see this day! This is the day the children of Israel are going to the promised land!”

Few seemed to disagree. One gray, grizzled man applauded after he voted. A toothless older woman wiped tears from her eyes. A young woman with an infant strapped on her back raised her fists in triumph. Many wore their Sunday finest for this finest of all days.

Down the road at Klipspruit, thousands of other first-time voters stood as the hot sun burned off the morning chill. But election workers sat idly in a huge tent in a weed-filled field, and in a hall at a fortress-like all-male workers hostel flanked with razor wire. Voting finally began 2 1/2 hours late.

Margaret Mncube, supervisor of the hostel poll, blamed the distribution network.

“The problem was we didn’t have ballot papers,” she said. “We had to go to another station and borrow some.”

But Mbe Mankayi, 37, a high school teacher wearing a torn ski jacket, was angry only at the people already leaving the line in frustration.

“I’ll wait here to the year 2000 to vote,” he said. “I’m voting for my freedom.”

The mood was much the same in Pioneer Park, a working-class white area south of Johannesburg. Gavin Bitter, a polling agent from the National Party, shook his head in amazement at the multiracial line that stretched three blocks. He said it was the shortest line he had seen all morning. “I’ve been doing elections for 20 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “It’s stupendous.”

The line was nearly half a mile at the Portuguese Community Center, and even longer at the Rossettenville Community Center. It stretched almost a mile at nearby Glenvista High School, a modern brick structure in a newly built middle-class suburb on scrubby hills south of the city. Down the long line, Elena and Andrew Theodosiou had already waited five hours in the hot sun, and reckoned they were still an hour or so away. But neither was impatient.

“It’s worth it, it’s bloody well worth it,” he said with a smile. “It’s our first year to vote as a democracy.”

In a sign of the changes, his wife brought their black maid.

“She didn’t want to come,” said Elena Theodosiou. “She was afraid of violence, of being killed. But I insisted. I said she must come to vote for the new South Africa.”

Even in Katlehong, one of the most strife-torn of the country’s townships, thousands of black voters inched quietly forward in winding lines at the D. H. Williams Community Center after the polls inside opened 4 1/2 hours late.

“It’s a mess,” sighed Pinky Vilakazi, an election worker, as voters filed by with their ballots. “We didn’t have any of the proper materials. But people have been very patient.”

Timothy Meisburger, an official U.S. election observer, was openly critical of the Independent Electoral Commission, the nonpartisan South African group in charge of running the election.

“They tried to run it out of their office,” he complained at the Alexsan Resource Centre in Alexandra township. “They had this hubris. They started late, and they never took it seriously.”

Judge Johann Kriegler, head of the commission, admitted later at a news conference that Wednesday had even more problems than the first day of voting Tuesday.

He said up to 30% of polls in the Johannesburg-Pretoria region and in Natal province had not functioned properly.

“What went wrong today is the IEC’s fault,” he said

Leaders of every party had complained to him of shortages of ballot papers, marking ink and ballot boxes to replace those that “got overstuffed from the overwhelming turnout,” Kriegler said. He said police would investigate if any ballots were found to be missing.

Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, head of the Inkatha Freedom Party, charged widespread rigging of polls in Natal province, including failure to provide enough ballot stickers with Inkatha’s name.

“I cannot rule out the possibility of us withdrawing from the election,” he warned.

But Kriegler said the election would proceed regardless and appealed to Buthelezi not to quit.

“It would be a great pity to spoil it now,” he said.