MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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NEW CHALLENGES FOR A NEW NATION_Mandela Facing a Huge Task

By Homepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN and GENE MUSTAIN, Daily News Staff Writers | Sunday, May 1, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—It was a symbolic moment too rich to miss—the eclipse of apartheid and a new day dawning on black aspirations for power.

Under a full moon about two poignant minutes apart, before and after midnight one day last week, a white soldier lowered from the flagpole for the last time South Africa’s old flag and a black soldier raised its new colors.

“The old flag meant a lot to me, but I am prepared to serve under the new flag,” said Cpl. Anton Jooste, the white soldier.

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April 12, 2009
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INCREDIBLE ROAD TAKES HIM HOME: Mandela Has Only Begun to be Great

By Homepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By GENE MUSTAIN and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers | Tuesday, May 3, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—This day was never supposed to come.
Nelson Mandela was never supposed to return from life imprisonment to divert South Africa from the ruinous path apartheid has laid for its peoples.
And blacks in this country were never supposed to vote in an election. Hendrik Verwoerd—one of architects of the apartheid system—guaranteed these things. Yesterday, he was proven spectacularly wrong, and Mandela was the one proven right.
He spoke from the heart and danced like a boy. It was a victorious day for all South Africans, he proclaimed, ever the unifier. “The people have won.”
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April 7, 2009
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