At the Dawn of Liberation

His broad, beaming grin is one of his trademarks, but Nelson Mandela thinks it makes him look silly. At 75 and soon to achieve his lifelong dream, he feels he must project a more dignified image. But his struggle to restrain the smiles failed last week as Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi finally agreed to end his Inkatha Freedom Party's boycott of the country's first all-race parliamentary elections. The agreement, said a jubilant Mandela, "is a leap forward for peace."

As the date of liberation approached over the past few weeks, the curse of violence grew across the land. It looked as if hundreds of thousands of black South Africans would be too frightened to exercise their hard-won right to vote -- and the country might dissolve into full-scale rebellion, shattering hopes of building a just nation. More than 20,000 citizens have died in the past 10 years, most of them in the rivalry between Inkatha and Mandela's African National Congress.

Then, only seven days before the polls were to open, the Zulu leader suddenly announced he had "decided to make compromises to avoid a great deal more bloodshed and carnage." Buthelezi dropped his demand for an autonomous province that he could dominate and settled for constitutional recognition of the Zulu kingdom.

As exhilaration displaced fury and violence ebbed, most of the nation's 22.7 million eligible voters -- 16.2 million of them blacks enfranchised for the first time -- are expected to turn out at the polls. The African National Congress will surely win, and when the votes are tallied this week, the black majority National Assembly will convene in Cape Town to name Mandela President.

The nation's metamorphosis also brought journalists onto the front lines. In the past year more than 100 have been attacked, and five have died. Last week photographer Ken Oosterbroek was killed and Greg Marinovich was wounded during a gun battle near Johannesburg. James Nachtwey, who has spent the past 10 weeks braving the unrest for TIME, helped Marinovich to safety. Undeterred, Nachtwey returned to taking the pictures that capture South Africa's violent birth of freedom.