
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 10, 1994                   TAG: 9405110094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA                                LENGTH: Medium

MANDELA ASSUMES OFFICE

A new parliament as multicolored as the nation chose Nelson Mandela as the first black president of South Africa on Monday. To delirious cheers, he accepted his people's salute from the same balcony where he spoke after emerging from prison four years ago.

Grown men cried and white police officers clapped as the 75-year-old who has promised a South Africa for ``all its people black and white'' stepped forth to receive the adulation of 50,000 people spread out on Cape Town's grand parade.

``South Africa, we love you, our beautiful land,'' sang the crowd to the beat of the ``Peace Song,'' a pop tune that has become the anthem of the country's transition from apartheid to democracy.

A sea of arms swayed back and forth to the music as the new multihued South African flag - red, blue, black, green, gold and white - fluttered in the fresh sea breeze of a picture-perfect autumn day in the Southern Hemisphere.

In a show of reconciliation, Mandela and his main black rival, Zulu nationalist leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, hugged and shook hands.

But all was not picture-perfect when Mandela and his estranged wife, Winnie, took the parliamentary oath together with eight others as new members of the National Assembly. He never looked at her nor acknowledged her presence, even when she sat next to him.

The snub showed the extent of Winnie Mandela's exclusion from the inner circle of African National Congress leaders, despite her popularity among militants. The couple had been married 34 years when they separated in 1992 after she was convicted of kidnapping and linked to an extramarital affair.

She expressed hope recently of reuniting with her husband, an idea he rejected.

Departing President F.W. de Klerk, with whom Mandela shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of apartheid, was among those cheering the man who bested him in the country's first multiracial elections. Mandela will be inaugurated today - escorted by the Mandelas' daughters, Zindzi and Zenani - at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

About 150,000 people are expected at the inauguration in the country's administrative capital. Foreign guests include Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Britain's Prince Philip and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat.

by CNB