To Our Readers: May 9, 1994

The birth of a nation makes an exciting assignment for any reporter. In the case of South Africa, last week's unprecedented all-race voting created a united land out of bitterly divided fragments, and for Scott MacLeod, TIME's Johannesburg bureau chief, it represented the high point of nearly five years of covering Nelson Mandela's journey from prisoner to President. "Most conflict stories we cover have tragic endings," observes MacLeod, "but what has made this a thrilling time to me is witnessing the remarkable determination here to heal divisions and achieve reconciliation."

MacLeod was outside Viktor Verster Prison in 1990 when Mandela walked out to freedom, clenched fist raised high. Last December he flew with him to Oslo when Mandela accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Those were great public moments, but McLeod has some private memories too. "On a campaign trip he stopped at a home for disabled children. Some kids were singing, and instead of moving on, he went into their classroom and joined them in the song. Before he left, he singled out a little black girl and bowed so low that he could softly bump her forehead with his. She's too young to vote, and probably too young to know who he is, but with that kind of attention to all sorts of people, Mandela may not have such a difficult time governing his nation after all."

To enrich this week's cover stories with additional insights into Mandela, we turned to contributor Richard Stengel. He too is a veteran observer of South Africa, having published the 1990 book January Sun, an account of a single day in the Transvaal town of Brits, where three men spend their separate, unequal lives. "I chose Brits," he says, "because I thought the real story of South Africa was in the countryside, not the cities." Stengel, who is helping Mandela edit his memoirs, admires the man's self-deprecating sense of humor. "As Mandela approached the polls last week," Stengel recalls, "a reporter called out to him, 'Who are you voting for?' To which a smiling Mandela replied, 'I have been agonizing over that choice all morning.' " His choice turned out to be his people's choice as well.

Against the backdrop of South Africa's triumph, photographer James Nachtwey, whose work also enlivens this week's cover stories, enjoyed a gratifying triumph of his own last week. His pictures from Sudan won the Overseas Press Club's Olivier Rebbot Award for the Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad in 1993.