Logansport Pharos-Tribune from Logansport, Indiana • Page 9

Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Indiana, Sunday, May 1, 1994 Page A9 African National Congress Predicts Big Victory Election expected to sweep Nelson Mandela in as president of South Africa JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) The African' National Congress brimmed with confidence Saturday as election officials started counting millions of paper ballots. For many ANC backers, the victory celebration had already begun. The vote is expected to sweep ANC leader Nelson Mandela in as president of a new democratic- South Africa. He would lead a coalition government that would include the current president, F.W. de Klerk.

Vote counting had been scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. Saturday, but many of the counting centers nationwide were just getting started at 6 p.m. Officials blamed slow delivery of sealed ballot boxes to the designated counting centers. The first returns gave an early lead to dc Klerk's governing National Party. The bulk of those returns were from the Western Cape region that includes Cape Town, where mixed-race voters embraced the white candidate.

The National Party had 14.436 votes to 4,696 for the ANC. This trend was expected to be reversed as returns from the rest of the country start to pour in. There Young South Africans recruited newspaper while waiting in line expected until Tuesday. were an estimated 22.7 million votes to be counted nationwide. ANC Secretary-General Cyril Ramaphosa forecast a 60 percent landslide.

Associated Press to count the ballots in the nation's historic all-race election read a outside Durban's exhibition center Saturday. First results are not His prediction was based in part on the huge turnout of black South Africans who jubilantly voted for the first time in the elections from Tuesday to Friday. A week ago. Mandela had spoken only of winning a majority. The key target is 67 percent.

If the ANC achieves that, the organization that led the anti-apartheid struggle would have the two-thirds majority in parliament required to enact the country's future permanent constitution. The Independent Electoral Commission, in charge of organizing the vote, said it would not rush the vote count. "Our approach is: It's better to get it right than to hurry," said Pieter Cronje, the electoral commission spokesman. He said the counting was not likely to be completed before Tuesday. Ramaphosa, at a news conference, called on South Africans to trust the commission and be patient while the returns came in.

He called the vote "very successful, an election that has started to bring a new mood in South Africa bonding people together and healing wounds of the past." Foreign observers and South Africans alike marveled that the election had come off peaceably, despite dire predictions of terrorism and civil war. The vote effectively transfers power from a white minority of 5 million to a black majority of 30 million. "Seldom in the annals of human history has such a fundamental transformation been accomplished in such a relatively peaceful manner," said a statement issued in London by Emeka Anyaoku, secretary of the Commonwealth, the grouping of former British colonies that the new democratic South; Africa is expected to quickly For some ANC backers, the; party had already started. In Cape! Town, hundreds of ANC supporters celebrated into the early morning Saturday at a "victory party" before the first ballot was tallied. As the party reached fever pitchy chants of "ANC! ANC!" reverberat-; ed around the dance hall.

Black and white grabbed hold of the nearest set of hips and formed a dancing chain. "This is what the new South Africa should look like," said one merrymaker. Ramaphosa appealed to ANC; supporters to show restraint as they celebrate over the coming days. "Our people must be They must be peaceful. They must express their joy in a way befitting members of the ANC," said Ramaphosa, considered a likely candidate for vice president under Mandela.

Heads of the observer teams from the United Nations, the Commonwealth, the European Union and the Organization of African Unity held a joint news conference to give their stamp of approval to the voting. "We are satisfied that the people of South Africa were able to participate freely in the voting," the-group statement said. South Africa: From Apartheid To Freedom In Four Years The word 'Miracle' is used by some to explain change in country EDITOR'S NOTE The Associated Press news editor in Johannesburg from 1987 until after Nelson Mandela was released from prison in February 1990. lie returned this month fur the first time to help cover South Africa's first all-race elections. QGQ By DAVID CRARY Associated Press Writer South Africa (AP) The word "miracle" is used freely in South Africa these days.

To someone returning after four years away, it borders on understatement. The election itself is spectacular long-disenfranchised blacks voting to make a former political prisoner their president, with the cooperation of the white party that for decades was their oppressor. But other miracles, big and small, abound in a nation sprinting away from its reputation for divisiveness. A black priest, once tortured by white soldiers, now prepares to serve in Parliament, eager to work with his former enemies to build a new South Africa. A police force notorious for repressing blacks now guards them as they vole, and pursues while extremists.

A black journalist jailed for opposing apartheid is now co-director of the national broadcasting company. During I he stale emergency from I9S() lo 1990. the hymn "Nkosi Sikcief iAfrika" (God Bless Africa) was the anthem of the antiapartheid movement, sung defiantly at illegal gatherings of banned opposition groups. Now it is the national anthem, played majestically at sign-off lime on television over scenes of the breathtaking landscape, of blacks and whites at work and play. In the 1980s, ihc government iried to rid ilself of Botshabelo, where 500.000 blacks lived in clusters of shanties scattered across a treeless plain in Orange Free State.

It was a dumping ground for blacks expelled from while-owned farms. Wiiite authorities wanted to strip them of their South African ship by transferring jurisdiction Ata 3td JERRY MILLER LOGANSPORT SCHOOL BOARD patent dedicated to quality education. PAID FOR BY THE COMMITTEE TO EtECT JERRY MILLER, ANN MILLER TREASURER 99 SEASON OPENJNG MAY 2ND Ken Haines Swimming Pools 301-A Mall Road, Logansport 753-8694 NEW HOURS: M-F SAT, "Serving for 20 Years" POOLS IN 65 SIZES SHAPES over Bolshabelo to the poverty- stricken black homeland of QwaQwa. This week, Botshabelo voters formed lines close to two miles long, helping bring democracy to South Africa, "Things have changed completely," said Mandla Maseko, 24, a campaign worker in Bolshabelo for the African National Congress. "In the '80s, people here were scared lo be part of the struggle.

Now, I can say 90 percent are supporters of the ANC. "They are really excited. They really want to see change." Blacks also voted proudly in the ramshackle township of Oukasic. The government officially abolished Oukasie in 1986, but in a remarkable show of defiance, 8,000 residents refused to leave in spile of constant harassment and offers of better homes elsewhere. "Sometimes in life you get tired of being harassed.

You decide to resist," a resident named Sello Ramakobye had said back then. He spoke with the quiet determination heard so often in black townships, a tone that foretold apartheid's doom. Under apartheid, blacks had only 13 percent of South Africa's land despite making up 75 percent of the population. Now blacks and whites are joint owners of such splendors as Kruger National Park, the Drakensberg Mountains, the rugged coast of of Good Hope. Even in the shantytowns around Durban, as squalid and violent as any place in South Africa, there is an ebullience, a confidence that was not there in the '80s, Perhaps the greatest miracle is the spirit of reconciliation.

"Many of the people who were proponents of apartheid are now willing to participate actively in building an apartheid-free South Africa," said the Rev. Smangaliso At $43 a month; it's simply the best cut around. The 500 Series lawn tractor. Test drive line today at your AGCOAIlis dealer. AGCO ALLIS Outdoor Power Equipment Innuvntion brought down lo 'Available lo qualified customers with down payment.

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was secretary- general of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference when he was detained under emer A-'K'V regulations in June 1986 one ol thousands of activists, many of them children, held without charge. Only after a year in custody was he indicted for illegal possession of firearms. At one point, he was tortured by six white soldiers who made him stand in one spot, handcuffed and blindfolded, for 30 hours. Charges against five of the soldiers were dropped. A sixth paid a fine equivalent to about $80.

"Bitterness for me is counterproductive," Mkhatshwa said Friday. "It saps our strength and our ener- gies, which should be devoted to building for the future, even with our former enemies and former torturers." As a legislator-to-be, Mkhatshwa" is acutely aware of conditions that have not changed since the 1980s: the great economic disparity, between blacks and whites, the need for decent housing 1 million towns, an education system mat still spends about five times as much on a white pupil as on a black one. "To address these imbalances is going to be a hell of a challenge," he said. "The speed with which the political changes have happened has taken me by surprise. There's a'' feeling this is not quite real.

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