This is one in a series of occasional articles about the first multiracial elections to be held April 26-28 in South Africa.
VERULAM, South Africa -- Much of the complexity and simplicity of South Africa's first adventure in full democracy seems to be contained in the 50 square feet of orange tent set up on a busy corner in this market town.
The tent, shaking in the warm humid breeze coming off the hills of sugar cane plantations only a few miles from the Indian Ocean, represented a tiny percentage of the tens of millions of dollars that have been spent to educate this population about voting.
Inside, a group of students from the Durban area, organized by the Muslim Student Organization, was offering instruction on how to vote.
It seems simple enough. If you are over 18 and have a document identifying you as a South African citizen, you put your hands under an ultraviolet light, dip them in an ink that would show up if you tried to vote again, get a ballot, go into a booth and put an X next to the party you want to vote for.
If you are illiterate, as about half the 18 million first-time voters are, there's a symbol and picture of the leader of each party -- in full color.
Then it gets a little complicated, because you have to vote again on another ballot for the regional election. But the real complication in this part of Natal is that Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party is boycotting the election.
The act of voting itself becomes an act of courage that can have deadly consequences.
"We have to show people that they need to vote to bring about change," said Yusuf Radebe, who was working in one of the tents. "We tell them that we've waited for this for 400 years. The right to vote is in your pocket. It's just a question of how you use that right."
But a few miles up the coast, in Tongaat, a group of men had come into one of the tents early in the morning, demanding to know why Chief Buthelezi's picture was not on the sample ballot, acting so threatening that the educators closed up shop.
Nearby, Stembiso Ngcobo was stacking sacks of potatoes. He had left his home in a nearby township recently because of the violence.
"I don't know about this voting," he said.
As Gloria Zulu waited for a taxi nearby, she looked over her shoulder when asked about voting.
"This place is dominated by Inkatha," she said. "People here don't want to vote. It's a very scary time."
Violence is evidence
Just how scary was demonstrated a few days later when six young men hired to hand out voter education pamphlets in the nearby townships of Ndewdwe were tortured and murdered.
It is the major tragedy of South Africa's first nonracial election that many people who have waited so long for the right to vote and who, according to the polls, want to vote, will not be able to because of threats and intimidation.
And even without the problems associated with Inkatha's boycott, putting on these elections has been a major task in the face of inexperience, anxieties still deep-seated from apartheid and primitive suspicions.
The Independent Electoral Commission, charged with overcoming all of this, started with one employee on Dec. 20. By the time the first votes are cast beginning April 26, it will have more than 200,000 employees.
"No organization can be expected to expand at that rate without glitches," said Johann Kriegler, the judge from the country's highest court who chairs the commission.
And it's not just a matter of people. There will be 9,000 voting stations. Inside will be 108,000 fold-up voting booths, constructed by prisoners last year. Some of the 126,000 ballot boxes are still being built.
Printers in Britain are turning out the 84 million ballots required in the two-ballot -- one national, one regional -- system.
The wax-sealed ballot boxes will be taken to 1,200 counting stations where bank tellers, paid about $100 a day for their efforts, will add up the results.
As many as 20 million people are expected to vote. Perhaps 18 million of them have never voted before. Half may be illiterate, many living in rural settlements, some still ruled by chiefs, coming out of cultures that have no tradition of democracy.
"You have to realize that we're not just talking about people who are illiterate," said the Rev. Sean O'Leary, a priest from Ireland who has worked in South Africa for a decade and helps administer many voter education programs. "We're talking about people who have never held a pencil in their hands before."
Father O'Leary was not sure whether the education efforts have been enough.
"Our figures show that we've directly reached only about 25 percent of the population, measured in the number who have attended a voter education session," he said.
What is not known is the effect of the huge amounts spent on media campaigns, ranging from a how-to-vote quiz show and soap opera on television, seen by only the country's 13 percent ** who own televisions, to a wide variety of programs on radio, the medium that reaches more than 90 percent of the population. The voter education program also has used rap groups, puppet shows and stage plays to get the lesson across.
Personal training vital
But experience has shown that there is no substitute for hands-on, in-person training -- which is what these Muslim students were trying to do.
On previous days, they had taken their tents into so-called informal settlements, squatter camps of tin shacks where thousands live near Durban. Although the state's Department of Home Affairs claims that 98 percent of South Africans 18 or older have an identity document needed to vote, more than half these squatters didn't know that they needed one.
"I am afraid they are just going to show up on Election Day and demand to vote," said Fatima Hendricks, one of the students. "That could cause some problems."
For some, the election process is baffling.
One man getting information from Ms. Hendricks interrupted her to earnestly ask, "But what if the party I vote for does not win?"
A smile came to her face.
"That's democracy," she said.
Many of those stopping by had questions about the double ballot system, which was only added in February, long after many voter education projects were well under way.
"They're baffled by it," Ms. Hendricks said.
Disinformation
There are fears that many will think the second ballot is for their second choice. Or that others might fall for disinformation campaigns that tell them such things as, "Put an X next to the face of the person you like the least."
Some are afraid of the invisible ink, thinking it will burn or mark them as having voted for everyone to see.
The integrity of ballot secrecy is a primary concern in a society where in the past the apartheid-era government tried to find out everything about those who opposed it. Many still fear that showing their identification books or other identification will somehow endanger them.
"Some of them are afraid of the ballot box," said Mr. Radebe. "They think if they put their hands in it, their fingers will disappear."
The students are staying out of the townships, the front line in the battles between supporters of Inkatha and the ANC. They come instead to the market towns where people get off taxis, buses and trains, coming to and from work and shopping.
The Independent Electoral Commission will use the same strategy on Election Day to get around Inkatha's dominance of the homeland government of KwaZulu where more than 2 million voters reside. The commission plans to ring the homeland with enlarged stations and try to safeguard the roads leading to them.
Originally, both days of general voting -- April 27 and 28 -- were to be holidays. But now April 28 will be a working day so those afraid to vote in their town or village may vote more safely in the bigger cities where they go to work.
Craig Charney, a Yale political scientist who has been involved in polling and research for the state-run broadcasting system, believes that there has been too much focus on the problems in Natal.
"You have to remember that Inkatha represents 7 percent of the population and not even the majority of Zulus," he said.
Problem of standards
Even without the Inkatha boycott, no one expected a perfect election. It would be absurd for the world watching South Africa's adventure in democracy to judge it by the standards of established democracies.
"We're running an African election for Africans by Africans," Judge Kriegler said. "Some voting stations might be under a tree in the middle of a field. The telecommunication might not be up to the standards of industrialized countries.
"Of course, it will not be perfect. But by and large, it will give people the opportunity to select freely who they wish to go to Parliament."
Despite South Africa's First World veneer, the vast majority of its population lives in Third World conditions, so there is little reason not to expect a Third World election, complete with violence.
"This election is really an intriguing combination of the glitz of an American-style campaign and the drumbeat of tribal loyalty," Mr. Charney said.
"Like other Third World elections, there will be problems," Mr. Charney said. "But many of them will not be that different from problems in American elections in the not-so-distant past. . . . And those elections were still enough to provide the mainspring of a democracy."