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On June 2, voters will go to the polls in what will be South Africa's second all-race elections

By Charlayne Hunter-Gault
CNN Johannesburg Bureau Chief

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- South Africa's second all-race parliamentary elections will take place on June 2. There is no suspense about the winner. Blacks, who make up the majority of the country's 42 million people, are mostly aligned with the ruling African National Congress and will no doubt go to the polls in sufficient numbers to return the ANC to power.

The choice of who will lead the country as president also has been pre-determined. Thabo Mbeki, 56, who has been in charge of the day-to-day running of the country in his position as deputy president, is set to inherit that mantle. Last year, he succeeded Nelson Mandela as president of the ANC, thus paving the way for that ascension.

Despite lack of suspense about the outcome, this election is what some observers are calling South Africa's first "real" election -- the 1994 poll being seen as more of "a miracle."

This election, then, is in many ways the second stage of one of the most compelling stories of the century: the birth of a democratic nation whose first leader, Mandela, enjoys a stature of almost mythical proportion.

Part of that stature derives from his 27 years as a political prisoner who refused to compromise his principles to gain his freedom. This stand -- which captured the imagination, if not always the sympathy, of most of the world -- was enhanced by a moral authority that enabled Mandela to take his country into its first non-racial election, avoiding civil war and chaos in favor of a transition whose hallmarks were forgiveness and reconciliation.

People lined up for hours to vote in South Africa's first all-race election in 1994
RELATED VIDEO Report from CNN's Mike Hanna following South Africa's first all-race election in 1994. Aired: 5/6/94 Windows Media: 28K 80K

If there is any tension in this campaign, it is over the size of the ANC victory. But it is a significant tension, with serious implications for the country's future.

The ANC is hoping to garner a two-thirds majority in the June poll. And while political opponents accuse the ANC of seeking such a majority so it can change the constitution and have a "one-party state," Mbeki has said the ANC has no desire to change a constitution it basically wrote.

Rather, Mbeki says the ANC wants what he more gingerly calls an "overwhelming majority" in order to "move forward faster." He says that he -- and the government he will lead -- will be committed to accelerating the pace of change, "empowering" the country's black majority, using affirmative action to give blacks more mobility and more entree into the economy, and speeding up the delivery of basic services -- including electricity, water, housing and health care access -- to the poor, most of whom are black.

But the performance of the South African economy will determine, in part, how much faster the country can move forward. Mbeki, a trained economist, is the "father" of the country's macroeconomic policy, GEAR, or Growth, Employment and Redistribution, which was aimed at stimulating the country's economy to a 6 percent annual growth rate by the year 2000 (it now stands at about 2 percent) and creating some 500,000 jobs (unemployment stands at about 40 percent).

With its emphasis on the free market, fiscal discipline and privatization, GEAR has proved controversial among the ANC's more left-leaning constituencies, such as the labor movement. But opposition has waned, and the GEAR strategy remains in place.

Mbeki's proposed plan to move "forward faster" would aid impoverished South Africans. Here, in the village of Machavistad, the school's 90 children have only water from a nearby well and whatever food their parents can scavenge.

The government points to a budget deficit of 3.3 percent, compared with its earlier projection of 3.5 percent. This it attributes to more efficient and effective revenue collection. But the South African economy remains hostage to global pressures -- as do GEAR's goals.

Better performance of the economy is key to two of South Africa's other major problems: unemployment and crime. Nowhere is the black-white divide more prominent than joblessness, which stands at 42 percent among blacks, compared with some 4 percent among whites.

If there is a ticking time bomb in South Africa, it is less the tensions created by radical whites who want their own "Volkstaat" than in the armies of unemployed young blacks, most of whom lack the education or skills to take advantage of whatever opportunities affirmative action opens up.

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Many see a correlation between the high rates of unemployment and the high rates of crime in the country. South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world, including murders per capita, rapes, car hijackings and armed robbery.

Sensational headlines and stories, especially about high-profile cases such as the recent killing of a South Korean businessman and the rape of a U.N. official, appear to be a factor in the "wait and see" attitude of many international businesses on whether to invest in the country.

This has helped fuel opposition calls for the government to get tougher on crime. Some seek a return to the death penalty, outlawed in South Africa's post-apartheid constitution.

While acknowledging that the government needs to do more to combat crime, Mbeki has ruled out a restoration of the death penalty, arguing that it was never a deterrent and that most of those who were hanged were black and included anti-apartheid activists along with common criminals.

He also argues that the vast majority of people who are unemployed are not criminals nor prone to crime. Rather, he says, those who are involved in crime are more often employed and controlled by organized crime syndicates and international cartels.

South Africa's economy is still dominated by a few giant conglomerates, mainly controlled by whites. Since 1994, black-owned firms have been making gains.

Mbeki, who is generally credited with advancing the call for an "African Renaissance" throughout the continent, also has called for an end to corruption in government. During this election campaign, he has zeroed in on corruption at home. He said in a recent interview that honesty would count for more than experience in appointing officials if it comes to a choice.

Such talk has provoked negative reactions and high anxiety among whites, many of whom are accusing the ruling party of "reverse racism" and the kind of "job reservation" that the ANC decried when practiced by apartheid regimes. Many whites are leaving the country in part out of fear that they have no future here, although some who left earlier have returned.

In 1994, the idea of a "Rainbow Nation" captured the world's imagination. It is still a country of peoples of many colors and cultures and 11 official languages, but Mbeki has described South Africa as a country of "two nations ... one ... white, relatively prosperous ... the second ... black and poor. ..." He went on: "And neither are we becoming one nation. Consequently ... the objective of national reconciliation is not being realized."

For Americans, who are confronting many of the same issues, the tension present in South Africa's transition to democracy is compelling.

Discrimination remains an issue for blacks, who are still emerging from decades of apartheid, as well as for whites, who say they have experienced reverse discrimination since apartheid was dismantled.

Few societies in the world have successfully resolved the issue of equal opportunity and the redress of historic patterns and practices of discrimination. South Africa is not only the latest to try, but there is a crucial difference here.

Whereas most of the societies, including America's, are grappling with how to resolve historic injustice against minorities, in South Africa those who were oppressed are in the majority. How that will affect moving "forward faster" will be fascinating to watch, especially given the high levels of illiteracy and low skills among the black population.

In its democratic infancy, South Africa has already provided the world with one unique model: how it dealt with those agents and officials of the apartheid state who committed murder, torture, kidnapping and other gross violations of human rights.

In countries like Rwanda and Nigeria, many are calling for a South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help heal the wounds of their brutal past -- despite an ongoing debate in South Africa about whether justice was truly served, given that many perpetrators got amnesty, while most victims got nothing -- some not even a chance to tell their stories publicly.

But flawed and imperfect as it was, the commission allowed democracy to triumph over civil war. Now, five years later, South Africa is once again being put to the test. How it fares is not just its own business, but also the business of an imperfect world.