From Mark Shotter in South Africa EVERYWHERE you travel there is an air of excitement and expectation. Every street is adorned with hundreds of posters for the different parties. Street hawkers shout the price of their goods interspersed with party slogans.
A radio journalist captured the excited atmosphere of the first few hours of voting on the first day, which was restricted to the old, the sick and people with disabilities: 'It is like a scene from the Bible, people coming on crutches, limping, hobbling on one leg, carried by the fit, brought in on wheel chairs, making their way slowly to the polling booths to cast their vote'.
For the millions of black people who have never had the vote it is not just a question of being allowed to vote for the first time; rather, the election is greeted as the advent of freedom and the end of hundreds of years of oppression.
The following incidents capture the level of popular expectation that is involved in voting for the first time:* A white woman rang a radio station to complain that her black maid told her she better pack her things, because the ANC had told her she could take over the house after the election.
* Workers at a car factory in the Eastern Cape started ignoring work orders because they said they couldn't be fired and tomorrow they will be in charge of the factory.
* A black truck driver reacted to a white driver who had cut in front of him by shouting 'you had better get out of my way because tomorrow is the last day on the road for you people' * A woman who had cast he vote said she was happy to have voted because she would no longer have to live in her shack - she was going to have a proper house.
Boycott
Although some tiny left wing groups have called for a boycott of the elections and other have run a propaganda campaign to warn people of the dangers of a future government of national unity, the ANC has managed to draw nearly all sections of the mass movement behind the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) which promises mass programmes for housing, electrification, job creation, education and health.
While many business and government commentators have dismissed the RDP as being impractical and too expensive they are just as aware as the ANC leadership that social programmes will have to be launched if the mass of black workers are to feel part of the existing order.
Pressures
With prospects of slow economic growth, and a government of national unity facing conflicting pressures, the left is becoming aware that what is achieved in achieving the RDP depends more on what takes place in the streets rather than the balance of forces in the government.
The brief experience of the Transitional Executive Council is not too encouraging, when we consider the following:* When a popular uprising overthrew the hated Mangope regime in the Bophthatswana homeland, the TEC and the ANC acted quickly to try to curtail the movement and to restore 'law and order'. This was despite striking workers feeling that their demands had not been met and continuing their strike weeks after the uprising * Joe Slovo, chairperson of COSATU union federation rejected ANC strike ban the South African Communist Party and a leader of the ANC called on behalf of the TEC for a moratorium on strikes. Although this was rejected by the leadership of the COSATU trade union federation, it was in the context of admitting 'difficulty in our attempt to reign in strike action in different parts of the country.
* At one of his last election rallies Nelson Mandela deWORKERS F