KATLEHONG, South Africa -- Millions of poor blacks believe life will be better if they help elect Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa.
After all, he told them so.
So they stand in mile-long lines, under intense sun or driving rain, for hours on end to vote for Mandela.
Now, as votes are being counted and Mandela's all but elected, they're waiting and dreaming of a new day.
Gladys Tshabala and her three children live among 3,000 people in Mandela squatter camp here.
She has a one-room shack of corrugated tin and mud. She cooks on a coal stove, shares a Port-a-John with five families and lugs water from a tap a block away.
"Once there's a new government," she says, "I'm hoping to get a four-bedroom house with one kitchen, one lunchroom, two bathrooms with flushing toilets and electricity."
Multiply that dream by untold millions and you get a massive national expectation.
Better housing, new jobs, better schools top everybody's wish list. All are desperately needed in black and mixed-race areas after centuries of white domination.
The question becomes: how quickly Mandela can deliver?
He and aides in the African National Congress talk about five-year plans, the length of a presidential term.
If the Mandela government can fulfill its pledge to build one million houses in five years, it will exceed the expectations of many experts.
Mandela also says he'll create about 2.5 million jobs in 10 years and offer free education. And electricity and plumbing are on the agenda.
Nobody wants to talk about what could happen if Mandela fails to follow through.
Owen Binca has an idea. He's township manager here, where 500,000 people live among open sewers, sooty coal fires and piles of garbage east of Johannesburg.
Five days before the first votes were cast, Binca came nose to nose with 1,000 angry residents marching on town center. They blocked the entrance to the mayor's office, shouting in outrage.
They demanded to know what happened to the white government's promise, dating to 1989, to build 28,000 homes here.
"Where do we sign?" shouted one angry resident, Vincent Duma. "We've been here since four o'clock this morning to sign up for the lots we were promised. Where are the lots? What is the problem?
"I am desperate," says Duma, who lost his job and can't afford his $ 15 monthly rent. His water was turned off three weeks ago.
About $ 30 billion supposedly was earmarked to start the project by building 12,500 houses. But the money never came, Binca says.
"We cannot do it. I do not have the lists," Binca told the crowd. "I am sorry I told you to come. There are no lists."
Eventually, the crowd went home. Now it's up to the new government to do more than make promises.
How long will it take to build the houses first promised in 1989?
"I'm 42 years old," says Binca. "I was born here. In my life they've built only 28,000 houses. It could take 42 years."
That's OK with some residents of rural KwaZulu.
"We are not babies. We know nobody's going to give us a house overnight," says Delicile Chongo. "All we are asking for is job opportunities. Then we can do for ourselves."
Adequate housing is such a critical need, says ANC Woman's League president Adelaide Tambo, that "we are asking (ANC contributors) to give houses instead of money. One house costs $ 7,000."
Still, ANC spokesman Pallo Jordan says the expectations of blacks are not unrealistic or impossible to meet.
Mandela's government can deliver 2.5 million houses in five years counting new homes and existing ones, Jordan says. "We'll also make credit more available more easily to black people and improve the terms by which they get (loans)."
President F.W. de Klerk, expected to be Mandela's deputy, says building so many houses cannot be done without draining the treasury or increasing income taxes.
The prospect of more taxes worries white saleswoman Vanessa Cloete. "Our young society had nothing to do with the racialist policy. Why should we suffer? Black people must try to forgive and forget," she says.
Mandela has taken special care to reassure white South Africans that their homes and businesses won't be appropriated, their wealth repossessed and their lives threatened.
But, things will never be the same. "The apartheid government owed nothing to black South Africans," Jordan says. "They did everything for the 15% of the people who voted for them. Why should they care about the rest." Now, Mandela's task is to show he cares - about everybody.
