Mixed-Race S. Africans Caught in Middle

The pharmacy manager who interrupted Shamiela Isaacs’ job interview for a cashier’s position didn’t mince words. The post was open only to black people, he advised, so the interviewer might as well quit wasting Isaacs’ time.

The discussion came to a halt and Isaacs, 20, a woman of mixed race and an experienced cashier, was bluntly informed by the white interviewer that she would not get the job. She was not suitable. She did not speak Xhosa, the native language of South Africa’s black majority in the Western Cape province.

“They keep the Coloreds down now,” said Mogamat Zain Isaacs, Shamiela’s father, criticizing the pro-black affirmative action policies of the ruling African National Congress. “Our people can’t find work here.”

The incident led the Isaacses to vote for the New National Party--successor to the party that had perpetuated apartheid for nearly half a century--in South Africa’s all-race elections Wednesday because they felt that the ANC had only the interests of black people at heart.

Their votes--and those of other disgruntled mixed-race residents, or Coloreds, as they are commonly known here--appeared to forestall a clear ANC victory in the Western Cape, which had been the NNP’s last bastion of power.

The two parties were running neck and neck in vote counting Thursday evening, but neither was expected to win a clear majority, forcing the creation of a coalition government.

The NNP acknowledged that its new centrist, conciliatory approach, designed to broaden its support base, actually drove away many conservative white and mixed-race voters.

And analysts said ANC gains in the Western Cape showed that, despite the reservations of some mixed-race voters, many believed that the party is interested in helping all disaffected people, not just blacks.

In the 1994 elections, the NNP--then known as the National Party, or NP--swept the Colored vote in the Western Cape. But five years later, many mixed-race people feel that they had been used as political fodder--to guarantee capture of the province, for the sole purpose of securing white privilege.

“We’ve been going through hell with the NP,” said Lynette Gilbert, 39, a receptionist and resident of the depressed mixed-race neighborhood of Mitchells Plain. “My life hasn’t improved. We need to give the ANC a chance to see what they can do.”

“I voted NP last time, and they did nothing for me,” said Shamiela Fortune, 33, an unemployed mother of four. “I want new changes, a better life, education for my children . . . and maybe a new stove.”

ANC officials said they already had proved nationally that they could make positive change. Since 1994, the ruling party claimed to have provided homes for 750,000 families, clean water for 3 million people and 500 new clinics to blacks denied health care under apartheid.

Many blacks, who make up 77% of the country’s population of 40 million, have entered the middle class. And many poor mixed-race people have received benefits such as free health care, maternity leave and housing subsidies.

Benefits aside, Natheem Williams said his vote went to the ANC because it had given him a voice.

“Why do we have rights now?” asked Williams, 27, an ex-convict who spent seven years in jail for armed robbery. “It’s because of the ANC. When the NP was [in power] I couldn’t even say what I wanted. There is more freedom now.”

And greater racial tolerance, many residents here agreed.

“Race relations have improved . . . and the ease with which you can communicate with [people of] other colors, without feeling lesser than them or inferior,” said Desiree Cross, who is grateful to the ANC for the new atmosphere but who cast her vote for the African Christian Democratic Party for religious reasons.

However, many mixed-race voters insisted that they would have fared better under NNP leadership.

Though far from equal to whites under the old apartheid regime, Indians and mixed-race citizens were favored in the workplace over blacks, and welfare privileges generally kept their living standards above the poverty line.

“Life was better; we lived OK,” said Faldiela Van Harte, 32, a cleaner. “Now everywhere you look you see black people’s lives have improved, but not [that of] Coloreds. Everywhere you look, black people are getting jobs.”