By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — Three words sum up the attitude of millions of hitherto disenfranchised South Africans as they cast their first votes ever in a democratic election: enthusiasm, elation and determination. On April 27, vast number of voters began to queue hours before the polling booths opened at 7am, in pitch darkness and very cold temperatures. They continued to arrive throughout the day in ever-increasing numbers, stretching the administrative capabilities of the electoral authorities beyond breaking point in many parts of the country.
Regardless of the difficulties and the discomforts of standing in long, slow-moving lines as the chilly morning became a scorching hot day, voters stayed put. Their dream of ending three and a half centuries of racial oppression was coming true.
Nelson Mandela, speaking at the ANC's final campaign press conference here on April 26, said words could not describe how he felt. "The many years of struggle in which our people have been involved are going to be rewarded. It is a great moment indeed. I share the feelings and the hopes and the dreams of many South Africans for this opportunity.
"It is not only blacks — Africans, coloureds and Indians — who are excited. It is also democratic whites, who feel relief that the entire population of South Africa should have the opportunity of taking part in a democratic election and setting up a government of their choice."
The very first votes were cast on April 26, when the elderly, the sick, people with disabilities and prisoners entitled to vote went to the polls.
At polling stations in Soweto, old people began queuing well before the start of voting. They came in taxis, on buses, on foot, in wheelchairs, on crutches. The mood was enthusiastic, and the crowd burst spontaneously into freedom songs and hymns — "Thank Ye Lord for What You Have Given Us" was especially popular — as they waited for the doors to open. They dressed in their finest clothes. The hope, anticipation and joy they displayed was inspiring.
The first person to vote in Dube, Soweto, was 74-year-old Lydia Lethaga. "I made sure that today I would be first here. I woke up at 5am and was here just after 6am. My husband thought he would beat me to it, but I made it first ... We have lived in Dube since May 1953 and have never voted. This is unbelievable. This is freedom. But we will vote for those leaders who have struggled with us, who have fought with us through thick and thin."
In Alexandra township, 104-year-old Philip Magagula said: "I have been waiting for this all my life. It is a great moment." In Sharpeville, 76-year-old Teboho Tsoeu, waiting outside the Mohlodi Secondary School for his turn, told reporters with a grin: "We have been waiting for this day to dawn. Ours was a long-fought, bitter struggle and many of our people, including children, died in that process. Now that it has come I am prepared to die after this, knowing that our children will have a better life."
Poppy Buthelezi, a young woman well known in Soweto and a living symbol of the 1976 student uprising, took her place in the queue. When she was 17 Poppy was paralysed below the waist by a police bullet. Asked what she would do if the person she voted for for president wins, she answered laughing: "Maybe I'll recover. Maybe I'll jump out of this wheelchair."
April 27 dawned with a massive turnout of voters at every one of the estimated 9000 polling booths across the country. People began queuing as early as 4am. By the time booths opened, officials of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) were faced with lines of up to 5000 people at some booths. Voters everywhere had to wait many hours before voting in lines that in some cases stretched five kilometres.
Observers throughout the country regularly described the crowds as "joyous", "festive" and "excited" despite mounting logistical problems encountered by the IEC as the day wore on. Remarkably, there were virtually no reports of political violence or intimidation during the entire three days of voting.
Voter turnout was large in areas considered bastions of conservative Afrikaner opinion, indicating that calls for a boycott by the white supremacist Conservative Party and its neo-Nazi allies, the AWB, fell on deaf ears. Indian and coloured communities also voted in heavy numbers. In the former Bophuthatswana bantustan, huge excited crowds converged on the polling places.
For many people, voting had important symbolic and sentimental significance. Many workers in the big cities headed back to their home areas in the countryside to vote. In Johannesburg, many chose to cast their votes in what was once the vibrant, multiracial, culturally diverse, freehold district of Sophiatown. Its people were forcibly removed to Soweto and the area destroyed by the regime in the mid-1950s. The white suburb erected in its place was renamed, in racist arrogance, Triomf (Afrikaans for "triumph").
Former mineworkers' union president, now ANC secretary general, Cyril Ramaphosa voted at the mine where he once worked.
Some people's attempts at symbolism fell rather flat. Pik Botha, the National Party's candidate for PWV premier, voted at Soweto's Holy Cross Mission. Few were impressed. "Let him join the queue if he has really changed. Isn't he a voter like the rest of us? It's just like them to jump a queue", said one voter.
Soon after, F.W. de Klerk visited the same voters. "When we were suffering, he never set a foot here. Thanks for coming, but this is the last time he comes here in that [official] car", a voter shouted.
At the Zevenfontein squatter camp, north of Johannesburg, well-off whites from nearby suburbs, fed up with the long lines in their areas, joined local black residents to vote. The affluent white home-owners have been trying to have these homeless black people evicted from the area.
"I'm happy that they could at last come here and see how we live — and see we are not a threat to them. They can vote here until 10pm and we will look after them", said one woman. A young man selling bananas commented wryly, "Next thing we know, they will be wanting to come and live here."
Talkback radio programs on Radio South Africa, previously the mouthpiece of apartheid, were awash on April 28 with white callers who seemed genuinely inspired and optimistic after having spent many hours sharing queues with black people. For many, it seemed, it was one of their most significant intimate encounters with their compatriots outside of the traditional master-servant relationships they have become so used to.
That relationship is likely to be increasingly challenged. Bertha Zwane, a maid who works for a wealthy Bryanston "madam", told the Sowetan newspaper within earshot of her employer in the voting queue: "Today is the day. I want to vote because I hope there will be change and our madams will recognise the work we do and compensate us accordingly". For three hours at least, Bertha and her madam were equals.