MAFEFE, South Africa -- As the molopo drums spread an infectious rhythm through the darkness of the night here, the new South Africa and the old Africa seemed to meet in the person of Rhine Maditsi.
He's finishing up a university degree in physical education and looking for a teaching job that will probably take him far from this village in the valleys of the northern Transvaal.
For now, though, this 24-year-old is home, where he will vote in South Africa's first multiracial election next week. He can tick off the parties and their positions and weigh the merits of each one.
But even as he does, ancient roots tug hard at his newly learned modernity.
He listens to the drums coming from a house a few hundred yards away and explains their significance.
"Someone is sick with molopo and they cannot get well so the sangoma comes with drummers and dancers," he said. Sangomas are the people who were once called witch doctors, now referred to as traditional healers.
"They beat the drums, trying different rhythms, until they find one that makes the sick person feel better. Then they keep playing that one. It can go on until very late at night."
Does he believe it will work? Of course. It always has.
The nights are dark in Mafefe because its 14,000 residents have no electricity. Stars cover the sky like a brilliant canopy, competing only with the soft glow of kerosene lamps.
Mafefe is in Lebowa, the homeland set up by the apartheid government for the Pedi, or Northern Sotho, people.
The town is ruled by a chief, a descendant of the 19th-century chief who brought his clan to this valley after one of the Pedi wars.
The crowded, politicized urban townships have formed the international image of black life in South Africa, but over half of the country's 30 million blacks who are getting the vote for the first time this week live in rural areas like this one.
Many are in towns like Mafefe where one minute someone might be discussing the redevelopment ideas of the African National Congress (ANC) and the next assuring you that witches do exist.
Lebowa generally makes the news for two reasons, corruption in the homeland government of Nelson Ramodike (who was just removed as an ANC parliamentary candidate) or another incident of witch burning.
Almost every time lightning from one of the huge thunderstorms that roll across the highveld strikes someone in Lebowa, local residents consult sangomas to identify the witches responsible.
A few older women usually end up burned to death.
"Do you believe in witches?" Ivy Swafo asked a visitor. "I do. I'm not from here, so I didn't believe in them. I moved here 14 years ago with my husband.
"Now I am part of this culture, and I know that there are witches, people who can make you sick, who can kill you, just by looking at you." Ms. Swafo, who has an 11th-grade education, spent eight years as a teacher in the local elementary school.
Like almost everyone in Mafefe, she plans to vote in the election. Indeed, Ms. Swafo is a community leader, active on the local health committee which has spent years dealing with the deadly pollution left behind by now-abandoned asbestos mines.
AThe tailings from the mines are still visible on the sides of the surrounding mountains.
Ms. Swafo lives in a small house which, like most homes in Mafefe, has two circular outbuildings. One is often an in-law apartment, the other perhaps a kitchen. She lives with her husband, Daniel, who has been waiting to be re-called to his job in a gold mine since a layoff three years ago.
Just behind her place, a short walk over the rocky, scrubby ground, lives Mack Madila, a sangoma. People usually consult him about illnesses. For around $3, he will take out his rabbit-skin sack, massage the collection of bones and shells inside, throw them onto a mat, then study them carefully for clues about the mysteries of the world.
The bones, some from domestic animals, others from baboons, speak to him, telling him what the ancestors say. He looked at their scattered pattern one day recently, pointing here and there with a stick, muttering to himself, taking his time.
"There will be no problems with the elections," he finally said. "Everything will be fine. It will all be peaceful.'
That is good news for Kelick Mahl, the young general secretary of Mafefe's ANC branch. It was just formed last September, but since then has conducted a door-to-door campaign, letting people know about the elections and ANC policy.
He has rounded up two trucks, two cars and 12 vans, the majority of Mafefe's motorized vehicles, to make sure everyone makes it from the remote parts of the community to one of the town's six polling stations next Wednesday or Thursday.
Ensuring a good voter turnout is Mr. Mahl's main job -- this is ANC country, with a sprinkling of support for the Pan Africanist Congress the only other factor.
Though many white South Africans fear that blacks have unrealistic expectations of the post-election world, the desires of the citizens of Mafefe seem reasonable and attainable.
They want a better road to replace the 10 miles of bumpy, rutted, rocky path that leads to their town from the nearest paved road. They want electricity. And they want jobs; the unemployment rate here is estimated at 70 percent.
"People know that their demands will not be met overnight,' said Mr. Mahl. "The ANC realizes the way people suffer. All that suffering will not be changed in a year."
'Still a snake?'
The ruling National Party that finally accepted the end of the apartheid it created did campaign in Mafefe a few days before. More than 100 people packed the hall next to the post office to hear Andre Fourie, the government minister who is trying to straighten out Lebowa's finances.
All were curious and respectful, though it appeared he won few votes with his spiel about the new National Party.
"I asked him about the snake," said Type Phiri, another member of the health committee, explaining his skepticism about the new National Party.
"I said that he disappears into his hole in the winter. When he comes out in the summer, he has a new skin. But isn't he still a snake?"
Despite the lack of any tradition of democracy, it seems impossible to find an adult in Mafefe who will not vote. That may be due in part to the lack of a democratic tradition; many people have taken their voter education lessons to mean that they are required to vote and that they are required to keep their choice secret.
Out along the Mahlapitsi River, in Ga-mampa, one of Mafefe's remote communities, 27-year-old Helen Mohlatlole was watching her mother shell dried corn one afternoon.
"Yes I am going to vote," she said. "It is good that we can choose our government. After the election, we want them to do what they promise."
Mrs. Mohlatlole would not say who was going to get her vote. "It is good that it is a secret. It would not help if everybody knows."
But she did say her choice will be the same as her husband's. "In our culture, we must do what the man says. When we join together, we decide to go forward together."
The next day, a van from the Independent Electoral Commission drove around Mafefe, its loudspeakers advertising a voter education session at the post office. The hall was again packed as officials answered questions about the ballot, about blind people voting, about getting help for elderly illiterates who want to vote.
Chief's big plans
Nearby, Chief Godfrey Thobejane, one of the few people in Mafefe in a suit and tie, was in his office.
He told his visitors of his plans for Mafefe, how he wants the government to develop a park in the spectacular mountains that surround the town, laying the foundation for a tourist industry. A better road would of course be needed, as well as electricity.
"If a white man lived in a house on a mountain, the government would string wire for 100 kilometers to reach him with electricity," he said. "They only need to come about 20 kilometers to reach us, but they have not done it."
He claimed that the amount his people pay every month for kerosene and wood would easily pay electric bills.
The bulk of Chief Thobejane's time is taken up with running whais in essence a small claims court, settling disputes. He explained that on other matters he takes direction from various committees, like the health committee, and then pleads Mafefe's case to the Lebowa government, which is based on traditional structures.
He hopes to stay out of politics and play a similar liaison role between his community and the new elected structures in the Northern Transvaal region. But that's only if the new government provides chiefs with a salary.
"The only thing that would make me stand for office is if I was hungry and needed to eat," he said.
South Africa's new government will have to figure out an arrangement between modern democracy and the traditional leaders who currently have authority over millions of the country's citizens, just as it will have to decide how to deal with people who burn women, certain that they are witches.
That night, Rhine Maditsi stared out into the dark as the incessant drumming provided a backdrop. Does he believe that there are witches?
"I'm not sure," he said. "Sometimes in the first hour of the day, the one between midnight and one o'clock, my friends look and see things in the dark.
"But when I look, I don't see them. So I don't know if there are witches there or not."
Perhaps electricity, and street lamps, could help with this problem.