Chapter One, The Prelude Summary and Analysis

April 27th, 1994 is the first day that black South Africans are allowed to vote. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is sixty-two years old and Nelson Mandela is seventy-six. Many people are afraid that there will be bloodshed as there has been before. Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has threatened to stay out of the election with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC). Prior struggles with the ANC have been gory and cost many lives, but on April 27th this is avoided.

Tutu decides to vote in a ghetto township that day in a show of solidarity with the poor Africans who have been systematically segregated. When Tutu becomes Archbishop in 1986, segregation is still in force. A Nobel Laureate and Metropolitan Archbishop, Tutu still cannot vote and needs a permit to live in his diocese. Of...