There were tears and ululations as former president Nelson Mandela stepped out of his car to vote in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
Dressed in a warm winter overcoat he walked into a scene resembling a Hollywood paparazzi scramble as hundreds of photographers and journalists competed with voters waving cellphone cameras for a photograph.
The gates of the Killarney Country Club in Houghton Estate were temporarily closed to control the crowd.
Mothers lifted their children towards him and women shrieked ”Tata, tata”.
Following his daughter Zindzi he walked with a silver medical cane, leaning at times on Gauteng Premier Paul Mashatile, his eyes twinkling as he smiled and greeted people.
Bodyguards pushed to control the crowd and television and sound men shouted at each other to move out of the way as he made his way into the voting station.
With a helicopter circling overhead the man who became the country’s first democratically elected president in 1994 went through his paces inside the voting room.
An electoral official placed a ballot box on a chair so that all the photographers could get their shot of Madiba slipping his ballot papers into it.
His aide Zelda la Grange handed in his two ballot pages as one photographer shouted to another ”hey sisi, no flash, no flash, they will throw us out”.
This was in reference to a standing agreement with photographers to protect Mandela’s eyes, damaged while he worked in lime quarries while imprisoned on Robben Island.
He returned to his car without saying anything while people broke into song around him.
When his convoy heaved through the crowd and left, everyone began chattering excitedly, while electoral officials replaced the cordoned tape that had been crumpled in the scramble.
”I did not know that this day would come”
Meanwhile, ANC president Jacob Zuma told journalists on Wednesday morning it felt great to vote freely after casting his vote in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal.
”When I grew up, I did not know that this day would come. This makes me feel great and it’s a feeling far different from the one that we had under the apartheid government.”
Zuma said he was confident the ANC would win, adding that campaigning had gone well.
Journalists struggled to hear Zuma, amid pushing and shoving, above the screaming of his supporters who were trying to touch him.
Zuma was accompanied by one of his wives, Nompumelelo Nthuli, and ANC provincial deputy chairperson Willies Mchunu.
”Now is the time to serve the people”
Struggle stalwart and ANC national executive committee member Winnie Madikizela-Mandela voted at Orlando West High School on Wednesday morning.
Dressed in black, Madikizela-Mandela arrived in a black Audi A6 at the Soweto high school at exactly 10.26am.
Accompanied by her grandson and other family members, she alighted the car with a smile and hugged residents, who had come to greet her, as she made her way to the voting room.
After casting her vote, Madikizela-Mandela said this election was special because it had the vibrancy and the atmosphere of 1976 and 1994.
”The ANC received a lot of wake-up calls. Now is the time to serve the people of South Africa and deliver on promises we have made since 1994.”
She said even 30 years ago, when she was banished to Brandfort in the Free State, she had no doubt that one day the ANC would rule the country.
When asked what she thought of the possibility of going to Parliament, she said she had never chosen a position, her priority had always been serving the country and its people.
”As you know I’m a social worker by profession. For me the main thing is humanity.” — Sapa