JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- They came in wheelchairs, on crutches and in stretchers. Some clutched Bibles, others voodoo beads. One woman brought a chicken to offer in thanksgiving.
"This is like Christmas," said homemaker Charlotte Jerom, 52, a black voting for the first time. "We finally feel like human beings. We are free. We are free."
The elderly, the ailing, the imprisoned and the expatriate Tuesday led off 23 million South Africans voting for national and regional governments in the first all-race election. About 9,000 polling places will open to all eligible voters today and Thursday. First results are expected Friday.
Foulups and long lines marked the opening day, but did nothing to douse the national feelings of joy and relief.
"Generations will thank us for what we have done today," said typist Bernice Desmond, 26, at the Klipriviersberg Recreation Centre in South Johannesburg. "Everyone is trembling. We are turning the page on a very dark history."
Widespread predictions of violence, even all-out civil war, never surfaced - but controversy did. The Inkatha Freedom Party accused the Independent Electoral Commission of handing out ballots that did not include their candidates.
But it didn't matter. What did matter was the vote, from the big cities to the tiniest rural township:
-- SOWETO. In this sprawling black township outside Johannesburg, Solomon Monne, 67, waited in the sun from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Home for the Aged. Yet Monne was spry and smiling as he pranced from desk to desk until he disappeared behind the voting booth. He emerged clutching the first ballot he'd ever touched and strode to a tan metal box. Snapping his feet to attention, he hoisted the paper above his head and bellowed: "Hah!" He laughed all the way out the door.
-- SOUTH JOHANNESBURG. In this black suburb of the financial capital, the overwhelming sentiment went to African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. "He has respect, good looks and a beautiful family," said unemployed accountant Maurice Caleb, 51. "People in South Africa and around the world will look (at him) and be proud."
Said unemployed - and illiterate - construction worker Jacob Eric, 24: "Mandela is our president, our king, our hero."
Eric was read candidates' names before voting - which led Inkatha workers to tell illiterates to put an "X" in the last block, their party's sticker. "I think I voted for Mandela," Eric said. "If I didn't it doesn't matter. I still voted. And that's important."
-- TOKOZA. In this township, site of many bloody political clashes, 80-year-old Christiana Vanqa was first in line to vote for the first time. "I didn't want to lose my chance," she said at the polling station in a hospital where doctors too often treat bullet wounds.
Vanqa outlived the "pass" laws that made it illegal for her to go to Johannesburg, 20 miles away. She outlived rules that forced her to step off the pavement when a white person came the other way and that dictated where she could live, eat and bathe. "I never thought that I would reach this time," she said.
Then she was handed the paper. "I know who I'm going to vote for but I'm not going to tell you," she said. When she emerged, she was smiling.
"I'm not the same Christiana anymore. I've done my job. Now I'm going home."
-- FORDSBURG. In the Johannesburg neighborhood that is home to many of South Africa's 600,000 Indians, Bibi Bagus, 80, and her family searched for ways to enshrine the moment. "We're saving everything for the future, recording every program, clipping every paper," said granddaughter Shaihana, 20. "It is going down in history."
-- PRETORIA. In this center of government, Cicero Rautenbach, 84, admitted he stopped opposing apartheid as he moved up the Afrikaner political ladder to become mayor of the gold-mining city of Carletonville. But he said he knew the days of white rule were numbered. "Five years in World War II told me the time of domination by whites was passing," he said. Nearly 50 years later, he cast a ballot to prove his theory.
Across the capital, President F.W. de Klerk took credit for the new South Africa after escorting his mother Corrie, 89, to vote. "It was my policy that apartheid should end. This power-sharing government is what I've been working for."
-- RETREAT. Kathleen Thompson, 62, a "colored" resident of this township 20 miles east of Cape Town, said it was a time for forgiveness. So her ballot was marked for de Klerk's National Party, even though its apartheid policy forced her to move to a rural area. "I was angry at the time but I had a roof over my head. I know the Nationalists, with all their faults, but I don't know what Mandela and the ANC will do."
-- CAPE TOWN. Keith Coates, 70, a white retiree, said he split his ballot: He can't support de Klerk's Nationalists because of their apartheid past, and cannot support the ANC because he doesn't trust the communist-laden leadership.
"Mandela and his cronies will ruin this country with their communist and socialist policies. And they are never going to solve the ethnic or tribal differences. . . . The Zulus will never accept being ruled by Xhosas (Mandela's tribe) and Xhosas will not accept rule by Zulus."
-- ROBBEN ISLAND. The jail where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years as a prisoner became a polling station for a day. The start was slow: The boat carrying officials and ballots broke down and arrived late. Eventually, most of the 700 prisoners were able to vote. Excluded: those convicted of murder, rape or aggravated robbery.
And there was voting around the globe as well.
In London, 80-year-old Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, president of the Anti-Apartheid Movement who spent 37 years in exile, was met by cheers when he arrived to vote at the South African Embassy.
"I shall never, ever forgive the evil of apartheid," said Huddleston. Looking around the spacious embassy room, he said, "I have entered this building for the first time in my life."
