S. Africa’s Second Multiracial Vote Proves Uneventful

PRETORIA, South Africa — In a vote celebrated for its ordinariness, South Africans turned out in large numbers Wednesday in their second national and provincial elections since the end of white minority rule.

Definitive results were not expected until today, but independent pollsters have predicted that the ruling African National Congress will win handily. Opposition parties also have conceded that the only battle nationally is for second place, although several of the nine provincial legislatures could be up for grabs.

“We know what to do now, not like last time when we didn’t know anything,” said Thokoza Malgas, an office clerk and young mother who voted in Soweto, the large black township outside Johannesburg. “You can’t say what will happen when you vote, but at least it means you can hope.”

The first returns, from Robben Island--where President Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27 years in prison under the apartheid government--showed that the ANC had more than 72% of the 77 votes cast.

Early this morning, with 43% of the national returns counted, the ANC was reported to have 57% of the vote. The liberal Democratic Party had 15%; the New National Party, successor to the country’s apartheid-era rulers, had 12%; and the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party had 8%. Other parties shared the rest.

Analysts were reluctant to interpret the partial national results because the country has no established patterns of party preferences, and most of the first returns were from rural areas. Based on preliminary calculations, election officials estimated that about 85% of the country’s 18.2 million registered voters cast ballots.

Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, the ANC leader who has been tapped to succeed Mandela, hailed the mostly peaceful and orderly voting as confirmation of the country’s new democratic credentials. Although there were glitches--from polling stations that opened late or provided the wrong ballot to tussles among rival poll workers--independent monitors said there were few of the problems of 1994, when the country held its first multiracial elections.

“This should be a proud moment for us South Africans,” Mbeki said after casting his ballot here. “This indeed demonstrates the commitment to a democratic system.”

As a precaution, Mbeki spent election day in his office prepared “to move quickly” if there was an outbreak of violence or some other crisis. But by late evening, with about 100,000 soldiers deployed in hot spots around the country, authorities say the balloting had been peaceful.

“We expect that there may be some controversy as the counting is done, but the way the elections themselves went, we don’t expect great problems,” said Vasu Gounden, a conflict manager on call in KwaZulu-Natal province, where political parties have clashed in the past. “I was not called out once today.”

The compilation of results was being delayed by a rush of last-minute voting ahead of the scheduled 9 p.m. poll closing. In some areas of Western Cape province, for example, thousands of would-be voters remained in line at closing time.

Election officials, working at a high-tech results center in a sports stadium here, said the country’s 14,650 polling stations had been ordered to stay open as late as necessary to accommodate latecomers; some sites were still open into the early morning hours today.

Election officials had sought to avert the long lines, which also were common in some places early Wednesday morning. Unlike in 1994--when anyone with identification could vote anywhere they chose--voters were required to register several months ago and were assigned polling stations.

But election officials, who based the placement of polling places on the 1996 census, said the country’s fast-changing demographics, particularly in black townships and informal settlements, had caught them off guard. Some stations that were originally intended to handle 3,000 voters, for example, were flooded with 15,000.

“Thousands of black voters haven’t been able to vote,” said Richard Calland, a political monitor in the Western Cape. “Their tempers have been frayed.”

The problem was made worse by a general fear among many second-time voters that the elections would be a repeat of 1994, when the polls were open for three days because of huge crowds and a litany of official bumbling.

In Nyanga, a poor black neighborhood near Cape Town, about 500 people arrived nearly seven hours before the polls opened at 7 a.m. to beat what they guessed would be a throng of anxious voters. This year, the jubilance and festive atmosphere of 1994 had subsided, with voters quietly standing in single and double file, wrapped in blankets, wearing multiple layers of clothes and some carrying flasks with hot drinks.

There was no singing, no cheering, no playful banter--just a somber line of human traffic dutifully performing their democratic duty.

“I am happy [because of] democracy,” said Mashwabade Matiwane, a 47-year-old baker and confectioner who cast his vote for the ANC. “I don’t carry a pass [or ID] anymore. Even the education is better for my children. My life is better than before. And the ANC is the party that brought democracy to this country.”

Rasheed Omar, an imam and Muslim community leader, said Wednesday’s voting lacked the euphoria of 1994 but was symbolic of how far South Africa had come in normalizing its society.

“What we see here today is a clear indication that democracy has flowed to the grass-roots of our people,” he said.

At Orlando West High School in Soweto, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of the president and head of the ANC Women’s League, cast her ballot with a pledge that the ANC’s second term in government will be a lot different than the first. Madikizela-Mandela has been placed high on the ANC’s list of parliamentary candidates.

“The president did his best in the process of transformation and in easing race relations in this country,” she said of Mandela. “That era is over. . . . This time around, comrade Thabo Mbeki is a no-nonsense man. Everybody is going to get down to business. The picnic is over.”

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Murphy reported from Pretoria and Simmons from Cape Town. Salma Patel in Johannesburg contributed to this report.