Voting Stirs Emotions for South Africans in L.A. : Civil rights: They line up at consulate to cast absentee ballots. The milestone election inspires everything from jubilation to fear of new turmoil in their homeland.

For Samuel Paul--who was jailed six times, interrogated repeatedly and beaten by police in his native South Africa--voting for the first time was a bittersweet experience.

He had fought for all South Africans, regardless of color, to have the right to vote. And now that day was here. But as he waited in line in front of the South African Consulate in Beverly Hills to cast his absentee ballot in the country’s first all-race election, he felt lonely rather than jubilant.

“I feel a need to celebrate with those who have sacrificed so much to make this day possible,” said Paul, who left South Africa five years ago to attend theological school in Los Angeles. “Standing in this line I feel very alone.”

After more than 40 years of apartheid, the overwhelming black majority in South Africa are casting ballots for the first time in the hopes of electing a government that will repudiate racism and pursue equality through multiparty democracy.

In four consulates and more than 20 other voting locations in the United States, about 100,000 expatriate South Africans were expected to cast ballots.

There was a mood of conflict, not camaraderie, in voting lines. Many said this reflected decades of separate and unequal conditions for whites and blacks.

“There is not a warm feeling in this line,” Paul said. “Some whites, I think, feel awkward waiting in a voting line with blacks. And for me, regardless of how they vote, white people still symbolize oppression. That’s something that’s indelibly inscribed on my psyche. That’s what living under apartheid does to you.”

For some in line, casting a ballot represents economic opportunity. Now that South Africa is no longer an international pariah, the country’s economy is burgeoning, and some plan to move back home to take advantage of the boom.

But Lebo Morake said he is returning because, for the first time in his life, he feels he belongs somewhere. “All those years of suffering in exile were instantly erased the moment I scribbled my vote on a piece of paper,” said Morake, who came to the United States in 1979.

Morake said he intends to open the country’s first black-owned movie sound track company.

While many in line still were angry that blacks could not vote for so long, Rick DuToit argued that the timing of the election was appropriate. “This isn’t something you can rush through in a few months,” said DuToit, one of a majority of whites in the Beverly Hills line. “It takes a while. The time was right now.”

DuToit, a computer software consultant, and his wife, Suzette, were not as sanguine about South Africa’s future as others in line.

“There were a lot of promises made and people have a lot of expectations now,” said Suzette DuToit. “If those expectations for a better life are not met, there is no telling what will happen.”

But Samuel Paul contended that South Africa’s future at least will be better than its past.

“If this day had not come now, there would have been a revolution in South Africa,” Paul said. “Not being able to vote strips people of their humanity. It’s pathetic that here I am, a 34-year-old man, and I am voting for the first time in my life.”