Mandela Begins Shaping New Government : South Africa: Slow vote count delays new president’s formal election. Gore will lead U.S. delegation at inauguration Tuesday.

President-elect Nelson Mandela began shaping South Africa’s first post-apartheid government Tuesday, but his formal election in Parliament will be delayed three days because of the glacially slow counting, by hand, of millions of paper ballots from last week’s all-race elections.

Mandela, who claimed victory Monday night and led the nation in a night of rejoicing, met privately early Tuesday with the lame-duck white president, Frederik W. de Klerk. Aides said they discussed who will be in the 27-member Cabinet that their parties will dominate in the so-called government of national unity.

The cheering crowds that shot guns and fireworks in the air, lit bonfires and danced in the streets of major cities and black townships were largely gone by dawn, and most people returned to work. Police said little violence or vandalism had occurred as the jubilant black majority celebrated the end of white domination.

The immediate concern was finishing the vote counting in time for Mandela’s inauguration next Tuesday in Pretoria. Vice President Al Gore will lead the American delegation, the White House announced, and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton may attend as well. Other expected guests include U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Britain’s Prince Philip, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and leaders of more than 20 countries from Israel to Pakistan.

After four days of counting, just over half the expected 23 million ballots were tallied by Tuesday night. Overwhelmed election officials blamed logistic and communication problems, as well as scattered cases of fraud, as the ballots were slowly counted and recounted at 1,200 stations across the country.

In some areas, counting has yet to begin. In others, many of the teachers and bank tellers hired as official counters had to return to their jobs Monday, leaving tallying posts unfilled. And at other stations, disputes arose over the use of party supporters to handle ballots. Pay strikes were reported at several stations.

As returns trickled in, the Independent Electoral Commission decided to bend its own rules to quicken the pace. The commission scrapped its required safeguard that officials verify that the number of ballots returned to counting stations matched the number of ballots handed out.

The outcome was not in doubt, because Mandela’s ANC appeared headed for a landslide victory.

With 53% of the vote counted, the ANC led with 62.5%, followed by De Klerk’s National Party with 22.1%. Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party was a distant third with a better-than-expected 8.3%, and the right-wing white Freedom Front had 2.7%. The white liberal Democratic Party had 1.7%; the radical black Pan-Africanist Congress had 1.3%. A total of 27 parties ran.

Under the law, the electoral commission must finish the counting and decide whether the election was “substantially free and fair” by Monday, 10 days after polls closed.

The approval is considered a formality--even though election abuses, including stolen ballots and ballot boxes, now appear to have been widespread. The commission received thousands of complaints and has referred more than 150 cases to police for investigation.

But with time running out, the multi-party Transitional Executive Council, which has overseen the government since December, delayed the opening of the new 400-member National Assembly, the main chamber of Parliament, from Friday until Monday. The assembly’s first official act will be to elect Mandela as the country’s first black president.

The executive council also delayed seating of nine new provincial legislatures. They will convene Saturday, rather than Thursday, and will elect a 90-member national Senate.

“The only date that seems cast in stone is the inauguration on Tuesday, because of the invited guests,” said Dries van Heerden, executive council spokesman.

Under the law, any party that wins more than 5% of the popular vote may claim a seat in the new Cabinet. So far, only the ANC, National Party and Inkatha have broken that threshold. But Mandela has said he may invite leaders of other, smaller parties to join, especially from the Pan-Africanist Congress and the Freedom Front.

Despite problems during the election, former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley, head of the Commonwealth election observer group, said Tuesday that the abuses did not undermine the result. “People had a chance to vote, they did vote and were able to make a choice,” he told a news conference before leaving the country.

U.N. Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi of Algeria had a similar assessment, saying, “We are satisfied that the people of South Africa were able to participate freely in the voting.”