No image sums up the joy, relief and hope felt by millions of South Africans better than that of 75-year-old Nelson Mandela dancing at the African National Congress's victory party last week. Gone was the dour, frowning, often hectoring Mandela of news conferences, interviews and debates. Instead, South Africa saw its new president-elect as a funky father of the nation, a beaming septuagenarian doing his own, stiff-armed version of the toyi-toyi, a warlike stomp that is synonymous with black protest against apartheid.
In many ways, Mandela's victory celebration was appropriate for a nation that is dancing on apartheid's grave, a nation awash with goodwill after decades of crippling violence and hostilities. But as the celebrations ended, Mandela turned to the sober task of shaping a new government and tackling its highest priorities -- forging a united nation from the fragments of the old one and uplifting the long-oppressed people who handed him his victory. "Our first task is to ensure that we build an atmosphere of national unity, where we do not reduce other parties to rubber stamps," Mandela told U.S. News.
With nearly 63 percent of the vote, his ANC will need to exercise self restraint to avoid trampling rival parties in a rush to implement its ambitious legislative program. Mandela coupled his generous promise to share power with smaller parties -- notably the National Party, which has ruled South Africa for the past 46 years, and the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party -- with a warning that no party will have the right to thwart the ANC's plan to build a million new homes, improve schools and health facilities and provide electricity for blacks disadvantaged by centuries of white rule. "Politics being what it is, there cannot always be consensus, and on certain issues the majority party will simply have to overrule the minority parties," says ANC negotiator Mohammed Valli Moosa.
Calming white fears. The ANC's failure to gain a two-thirds majority of the vote, however, means consensus will be a requirement rather than a gift in at least one area -- the drafting of a permanent constitution. Mandela's party will need the support of smaller parties, particularly outgoing President F.W. de Klerk's National Party, which finished a distant second in the voting, to draft a charter to replace the interim Constitution that took effect April 27. That could help ensure the white minority a place in government for decades to come and assuage white fears about the future under black majority rule.
Still, despite Mandela's well-known commitment to nonracialism and his repeated appeals to whites to stay and help build a strong economy, many are watching to see how he balances those commitments against the ANC's promises to its main constituency. Bypassing ANC Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa, who negotiated the transition to majority rule, Mandela chose ANC foreign affairs chief Thabo Mbeki as one of two deputy presidents in the new government, thus putting at his side a popular ANC veteran who is highly regarded in business and diplomatic circles.
De Klerk, as head of the only other party to win at least 20 percent of the vote, will fill a second deputy presidency in the Mandela cabinet, a position from which he can be a strong voice for white minority concerns. But fellow National Party moderate R.W. "Pik" Botha will be replaced as foreign minister by ANC diplomat Alfred Nzo; Communist Party chief Joe Slovo will be minister of housing and welfare; and longtime ANC guerrilla commander Joe Modise will become South Africa's new defense minister.
Friction ahead. The toughest challenge for the new South African government is likely to be the war-wearyprovince of KwaZulu/Natal, where Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha party was the surprise winner. Buthelezi's clear victory, with 50.3 percent to the ANC's 32.2 percent, will force the ANC national government to work with a regional government controlled by its longtime nemesis. The relationship is bound to be fraught with friction, but the IFP victory may have saved the region from renewed civil war.
With the ANC in control of the central government and seven of nine provinces, Mandela's first task will be to draw Buthelezi's KwaZulu/Natal into a unified South Africa and relieve suspicions that the region will be neglected or punished for backing Inkatha.
With the election declared "substantially free and fair" by South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission, the unifying and rebuilding of this long divided country can now begin. The job will be even tougher than stomping apartheid into the grave.
