President Of South

THE INAUGURATION of Kim Dae Jung as president of South Korea is the most exciting democratic transition since Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president of South Africa in 1994. The two have much in common, not least the almost impossibly high expectations greeting them.Each was a lifelong crusader against tyranny who spent time in prison. Mr. Kim still limps from a botched government-ordered assassination attempt. Each came to power from the opposition in a democratic election, long past retirement age. Mr. Kim is 74, a year younger than Mr. Mandela was in 1994.

It's been nearly two decades since Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. Four years after his 1990 release, he became the president of South Africa and led his country into desegregated democracy. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela said, "There's no use to dwell in the past. Only remember it, so you can avoid these same mistakes. To build a new future, dwell in the present." Taking Mandela's words to heart, his beloved country has moved forward. No one has forgotten apartheid, of course.

NOW OR NEVER Musical multitasker Vusi Mahlasela will perform a free concert at Goucher College's Kraushaar Auditorium at 8 p.m. Saturday. The South African native is an accomplished guitarist, percussionist, arranger and composer with an impressive list of performances, including Nelson Mandela's 1994 inauguration as president of South Africa and guest vocals on the Dave Matthews Band album Everyday. Mahlasela's concert is part of Goucher College's South Africa at Ten, a conference commemorating the 10th anniversary of democratic elections in South Africa.

Johannesburg, South Africa -- In December, leaders of South Africa's ruling African National Congress will pick a successor to Thabo Mbeki, the party's current president. The election will have huge implications. In South Africa the dominant political party chooses the nation's president, and the ANC has 70 percent of the seats in Parliament. The party's next leader will almost certainly lead the nation. Another reason it will be huge is that the party is sharply divided over how best to lift millions of blacks out of poverty, 13 years after the end of the racist apartheid system.

TWO YEARS AFTER Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, the easy part is over. Long-term success now hinges on the government's ability to narrow the pronounced economic disadvantage of the non-white population groups.This is a difficult task. After an initial euphoria, many whites are worried that they will be subjected to a forced redistribution of wealth. Meanwhile, recent sporadic violence suggests blacks are getting impatient about the slow pace of economic improvement.Throughout its modern history, South Africa has been characterized by a highly concentrated ownership of the private sector.

F. W. de Klerk, former president of South Africa, said last night that he took the "right turn" when he eliminated apartheid and freed Nelson Mandela from prison seven years ago."I would hope that history will recognize that I, together with all those that supported me, have shown courage, integrity and honesty at the moment of truth in our history, that we took the right turn," de Klerk told a packed audience at the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus. His appearance was part of the university's Woodrow Wilson International Symposium series.

FOR VALIANT opposition to tyranny, Kim Dae Jung deserved to win election as president of South Korea. No one has earned it more than this doughty crusader for democracy. He is to his country what Vaclav Havel is to the Czech Republic, Lech Walesa is to Poland and Corazon Aquino is to the Philippines. They lived to become president of their countries and were disappointing in the role.Mr. Kim, who is either 72 or 74, depending on whether you believe him or documents, retired from politics in 1992 after he lost the presidency for the third time.

The private and public sectors should heed the White House call to end economic sanctions against South Africa. Divestment, disinvestment, the Sullivan principles, the sports boycott and other mechanisms designed to force South Africa to end oppression of its black majority worked. Too slowly, but without war. It's time to claim victory.Nelson Mandela told the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid on Friday, "We believe the time has come when the international community should lift all economic sanctions against South Africa."

He might have been triumphal, vengeful, proud, vindictive, exultant. Nelson Mandela was none of those things upon his inauguration as president of the country that since his birth 75 years ago denied him rights of citizenship and for 27 of those years kept him in prison. He was uplifting, generous, all-embracing. "Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud."That was a courageous thing to say because, knowing the troubled times that must lie ahead, the new president of South Africa has set the highest standard against which he and his colleagues will be judged.

Nelson Mandela's triumphant visit to the United States last week in his new eminence as president of South Africa -- a role unthinkable at the start of this decade -- had one over-arching goal: To enlist Americans who played so great a part in crushing apartheid in a crusade to make the post-apartheid state a success.Mr. Mandela knew he had the easy part: the Clinton administration's enthusiastic promise of $800 million in direct aid plus $150 million in investment guarantees designed to lure $1.3 billion from the private sector.

NOW OR NEVER Musical multitasker Vusi Mahlasela will perform a free concert at Goucher College's Kraushaar Auditorium at 8 p.m. Saturday. The South African native is an accomplished guitarist, percussionist, arranger and composer with an impressive list of performances, including Nelson Mandela's 1994 inauguration as president of South Africa and guest vocals on the Dave Matthews Band album Everyday. Mahlasela's concert is part of Goucher College's South Africa at Ten, a conference commemorating the 10th anniversary of democratic elections in South Africa.

SEOUL, South Korea - Roh Moo-hyun, a liberal lawyer who campaigned urging continued engagement with North Korea and greater autonomy from the United States, narrowly won the South Korean presidential election yesterday after a tumultuous campaign. The victory of Roh, the candidate of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party, sets South Korea and the United States on the most divergent diplomatic paths they have followed in a half-century of close military and economic alliance. With about 86 percent of the votes counted, Roh held a lead of 48.9 percent to 46.6 percent over Lee Hoi-chang, a staunchly conservative ex-supreme court justice who lost even more narrowly to the departing President Kim Dae Jung five years ago. The Bush administration has spent the past three months pressing traditional friends such as Japan and newer ones, such as Russia and China, to increase pressure on North Korea to force that country to abandon its nuclear weapons program and to end its missile sales in the Middle East and elsewhere.

PRETORIA, South Africa - No one said Nelson Mandela would be an easy act to follow. Not many politicians would be eager to be measured against the prisoner-turned-president who is revered as nearly holy by his nation and most of the world. But few South Africans could have predicted the trouble that Mandela's heir has had the past few months. After an ambitious start in office a little more than a year ago, President Thabo Mbeki, 58 - the gifted former deputy president and Mandela's designated successor - has become the object of ridicule, a remote president out of touch with his people, a liability, critics say, not a leader.

THE INAUGURATION of Kim Dae Jung as president of South Korea is the most exciting democratic transition since Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president of South Africa in 1994. The two have much in common, not least the almost impossibly high expectations greeting them.Each was a lifelong crusader against tyranny who spent time in prison. Mr. Kim still limps from a botched government-ordered assassination attempt. Each came to power from the opposition in a democratic election, long past retirement age. Mr. Kim is 74, a year younger than Mr. Mandela was in 1994.

FOR VALIANT opposition to tyranny, Kim Dae Jung deserved to win election as president of South Korea. No one has earned it more than this doughty crusader for democracy. He is to his country what Vaclav Havel is to the Czech Republic, Lech Walesa is to Poland and Corazon Aquino is to the Philippines. They lived to become president of their countries and were disappointing in the role.Mr. Kim, who is either 72 or 74, depending on whether you believe him or documents, retired from politics in 1992 after he lost the presidency for the third time.

F. W. de Klerk, former president of South Africa, said last night that he took the "right turn" when he eliminated apartheid and freed Nelson Mandela from prison seven years ago."I would hope that history will recognize that I, together with all those that supported me, have shown courage, integrity and honesty at the moment of truth in our history, that we took the right turn," de Klerk told a packed audience at the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus. His appearance was part of the university's Woodrow Wilson International Symposium series.

PRETORIA, South Africa - No one said Nelson Mandela would be an easy act to follow. Not many politicians would be eager to be measured against the prisoner-turned-president who is revered as nearly holy by his nation and most of the world. But few South Africans could have predicted the trouble that Mandela's heir has had the past few months. After an ambitious start in office a little more than a year ago, President Thabo Mbeki, 58 - the gifted former deputy president and Mandela's designated successor - has become the object of ridicule, a remote president out of touch with his people, a liability, critics say, not a leader.

PRETORIA, South Africa -- Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa yesterday, culminating one of the most remarkable journeys in the history of modern nations.For Mr. Mandela, the journey began in a rural village of the Transkei, went through the turbulence of black township politics, persevered during imprisonment and, finally, reached triumph at the ballot box.And in his triumph, the 75-year-old president pleaded for reconciliation among a people torn by decades of hatred and rivalry.

TWO YEARS AFTER Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, the easy part is over. Long-term success now hinges on the government's ability to narrow the pronounced economic disadvantage of the non-white population groups.This is a difficult task. After an initial euphoria, many whites are worried that they will be subjected to a forced redistribution of wealth. Meanwhile, recent sporadic violence suggests blacks are getting impatient about the slow pace of economic improvement.Throughout its modern history, South Africa has been characterized by a highly concentrated ownership of the private sector.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Two years after electing Nelson Mandela the country's first black president, South Africa's Parliament yesterday gave the country a new constitution that permanently enshrines the principles of nonracial democracy in what was once the land of apartheid."