COLUMN ONE : One Year Into a Quiet Revolution : Since apartheid’s end, South Africa has taken small steps toward solving huge problems. And at its core, the nation has changed--once torn by terror, it has found peace of mind.

It has taken a full year, but here on the edge of a destitute slum, nestled between a roaring highway and a rumbling railroad track, Patricia Matolengwe’s dream home finally is taking shape.

Unlike her current tin-roofed shack, built from tar paper and packing crates, this house has concrete walls under a sloping tile roof. Inside are two tiny bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. When it’s done, she’ll have electricity, indoor plumbing and even a small yard for a vegetable garden.

In the coming months, another 149 similar homes, plus a school and clinic, will rise on this rubble-filled swamp. The government has contributed $2.7 million, but local women, all from nearby shantytowns, will help build the houses to reduce costs. They will even make the concrete blocks and roofing tiles.

“It’s like a dream,” Matolengwe said happily as a jet howled overhead from nearby Cape Town’s airport. “Some of us are more than 30 years living as squatters. That’s why we are so proud.”

A single home on a dismal dump may seem poor evidence that President Nelson Mandela’s government is fulfilling its grand promises of making a better life for the millions of impoverished blacks who voted for the first time a year ago today to end apartheid and bring majority rule to South Africa.

But the homeowners-to-be here are far from angry at the slow pace of progress. Despite fears, the liberation election did not spark a sudden surge of unrealistic demands. There is grumbling but little real dissent a year after the rebirth of the nation.

“We are satisfied,” said Veliswa Mbeki, a 35-year-old mother clutching a newborn in a ragged blanket. “We can’t expect the government to do everything overnight.”

Mandela, perhaps the world’s most popular politician, is the first to concede that his year-old government has barely begun to redress the inequalities of apartheid. Indeed, tangible benefits are difficult to find.

Only about 1,000 homes have been built of the 1 million promised by 1999. Black unemployment is still shameful at 40%. Millions still lack running water, electricity, decent schools or doctors.

Attempts at land reform and affirmative action in employment have done little to close the yawning gap between rich and poor, black and white. And criminal violence has replaced political violence as a brutal fact of life: By most accounts, South Africa is the world’s deadliest society not at war.

The culture of angry protest that helped bring down white rule now finds new targets. In recent months, soldiers have mutinied, police have fought police, truckers have blocked highways and students have taken hostages. Nurses even dumped infectious waste in a crowded hospital ward in a strike for higher wages.

But much clearly has changed in South Africa, for the better and forever, a year after what Mandela this week called “our democratic revolution.”

Probably no other society has made such a radical, and relatively painless, transformation. A racist, pariah regime has become a liberal democracy dedicated to preaching reconciliation, improving social services and correcting injustices of the past.

Schools have integrated with little violence. Debates rage in a free and vibrant press. An independent Constitutional Court promises to check official abuses. A new police commissioner is striving to reform a notorious force.

Mandela’s five-year Reconstruction and Development Program, once derided as a fanciful wish list, has been embraced by white business leaders and black shack dwellers alike as a national blueprint for reform.

And even minimal improvements have made a huge difference in the lives of millions of desperately poor people.

Peanut butter sandwiches and milk or juice--25% of minimum daily nutritional requirements--are given each day to more than 5 million hungry schoolchildren. Free medical care is provided to pregnant women and toddlers. More than 378,000 homes have been wired for electricity, mostly in poor areas.

“There is a big change,” said Florence September, a bookkeeper in blighted Khayelitsha township. “Since last year, we’ve had electricity even in the squatter areas. And we had garbage in the streets and no (sewage) drains since 1986. Now the streets are clean and the drains--if they are blocked, they come to fix them.”

Most important, perhaps, is the sense of social freedom and legal equality after generations of racial oppression and fear. Blacks have won the power, dignity and opportunity denied for so long. Whites, who have given up surprisingly little, are finally enjoying life without guilt.

“A new South African civilization is in the making,” boasts Mandela.

“One is reluctant to beat his chest and claim he had achieved far beyond what he had expected,” he told foreign correspondents Monday. “We have gone a long way to changing some of the evils that have haunted the majority of our people for the last 300 years. . . . I think we have made remarkable progress, indeed.”

Groups of neo-Nazi whites, who terrorized the nation with guns and apocalyptic threats before the election, have largely faded into the shadows. So have militant black groups that bombed white churches and taverns. In many ways, race relations are more even-keeled than in the United States.

The International Monetary Fund has given its blessings to the country’s cautious economic policies. This year’s budget increases spending for housing, education and health care. But enough other costs, including defense, are cut that a sizable reduction in the deficit is forecast.

And while the economy has hardly boomed, economic growth of more than 3% is expected to top population growth this year for the first time in a decade. One reason is the steady stream, if not yet a flood, of foreign investment.

The number of U.S. companies with direct investment or employees in South Africa jumped nearly a third in the past year, to 206. Those that returned after disinvesting in the 1980s include Coca-Cola, Ford and IBM. New arrivals include AT&T;, Compaq Computer and Levi Strauss. McDonald’s and others are scrambling to get in.

The opening to the outside world has come at a cost. Virtually all the world’s major drug syndicates have added South Africa to their trafficking networks. And illegal immigration from neighboring African nations to the continent’s richest economy has exploded.

But educated whites have stopped fleeing for Sydney and San Francisco, and the country’s debilitating brain drain has largely eased.

“Things are 10 times better,” said Nick Vontas, a white Johannesburg land developer who just bought a new Mercedes sedan. “Before, there was always uncertainty. Now, I am sure about the future. I’m here to stay.”

“It’s better than I had hoped,” agreed Eleanor Roke, a white office worker in Wynburg, a Johannesburg suburb. “But we’re still treading in some very stormy waters.”

Black confidence is also growing. Millions of township residents who had refused to pay rent and utility bills to protest apartheid are now shelling out. In Soweto alone, the largest township, about 65% of families now pay such fees, compared to 20% before the election.

“People are coming to their senses,” said Kebareng Bogopane, a black political leader in Phokeng, a rural township outside Rustenburg. “We are no more living in the past.”

To be sure, a key achievement of the constitutionally mandated, five-year national unity government is its mere survival. Mandela’s African National Congress dominates an uneasy partnership with the white-led National Party that was the architect of apartheid, and the ANC’s chief black rival, the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party.

But the new democratic Parliament has worked surprisingly well, given that many of its members came from prison, exile or the streets. More than 100 bills are in committee, with votes scheduled on everything from creating an independent Truth Commission to expose the crimes of apartheid, to laws regulating traditional healers.

“I don’t think any of us really knew what we were in for,” said Frene Ginwala, a former ANC exile who became the first woman speaker of the 400-member National Assembly. “I’d give us an A, if not an A-plus.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is almost as charitable. He gives the new nation an “A-minus,” even as he admits the problems.

“Maybe we haven’t had a dramatic change in the sense that before April 27 last year, whites owned most of the land in this country,” he said. “Today, whites still own most of the land. Before April 27, they owned most of the wealth and the companies on the stock exchange. That is still very much the case. They were the top dogs in the civil service. They still are. They were top dogs in the army, the navy, the police, you name it. They still are.

“But people are carrying themselves differently,” Tutu added. “They are free. Even if you can’t attach a material value to it, this is our government. We have our flag. There is something in the air. . . . We may not have many tangible improvements. But a great deal has changed.”

This year’s budget, the first formulated by Mandela’s government, includes $1.4 billion for reconstruction and development. After a slow start, officials promise far more visible improvements, from rural health clinics to water distribution schemes.

“The time for delivery has started,” said Jay Naidoo, the minister in charge of development. But he warned, “The reality is that achieving fundamental change will take longer than five years.”

That may be too long. Can the government deliver enough goods before people’s patience wears out? Will enough jobs be created to absorb the growing army of unskilled youths?

When Mandela steps down in 1999, will his successor be able to keep the country together? Will the ANC’s overwhelming political dominance for the foreseeable future lead to a one-party state fed by patronage and corruption?

No one knows the answers, since the new South Africa remains an experiment in progress and a country in transition.

Still, the first year is enough time to celebrate the progress in Thokoza, a soul-deadening slum near Johannesburg long riven by ethnic and political war. Today, children play on the former killing grounds outside workers’ hostels. The street barricades are down, the trenches now filled.

Most astonishing, former enemies from Self Defense Units, the ANC’s urban guerrillas, and the rival Self Protection Units, Inkatha’s township warriors, now wear police reserve uniforms and share roadblocks and foot patrols to keep trouble out.

“We no longer have kangaroo courts,” said former guerrilla William Radebe, referring to the brutal street tribunals that were infamous for “necklacing” suspects, or wedging them in tires and burning them alive. “Now if we know of someone with a crime, we take them to the police.”

Few would call Thokoza cozy, or even pleasant. Trucks have cleared the streets of trash, but they remain potholed and muddy. There are still no restaurants, movie theaters or other amenities.

But Mary Modise, principal of the local Letadiman Primary School, has something now she never had before: peace of mind.

“We can sleep at night,” she said. “No gunshots. Even at work, it’s peaceful. The children can study. They are no longer afraid. And we can teach the whole day.”

Her classes are desperately overcrowded, and books, chalk and other basic materials are in short supply. But vandalism and absenteeism have dropped dramatically. After a year of democracy, she is more than content.

“The people are living in peace,” she said. “We never thought that was possible.”