THE ELEGANT former cotton town of La Grange, south west of Atlanta, occupies an inglorious spot in the history of American race relations. So determined were its white residents to keep their slaves that every last man Is said to have left home to fight for the Confederacy.
More than a century later the town was a bastion of Jim Crow prejudice. Andrew Young, the United States's first black ambassador to the United Nations, recalls that as a child he and his family feared for their lives when they travelled through La Grange on their way to Alabama.
But these days La Grange is cultivating a very different image as a model of tolerance and international solidarity. For the past four years it has hosted and helped to fund a remarkable programme which trains and educates potential Olympians from Third World, mostly African, countries.
In recent weeks the stately neo-Colonlal campus of the town's little Methodist college has been transformed into a virtual Olympic village as more than 500 athletes from 43 countries have joined the 40 or so resident athletes to prepare for the Atlanta Games.
At dinner in the college's spartan canteen, Slovakian race-walkers rub shoulders with Brazilian basketball players and a Greek marathon runner tucks in a few yards from a South African swimmer. "We had a great beach volleyball game the other day," says Jim Minnihan, director of the La Grange Sports Authority. "There were Saudis on one side playing with Burundis and a whole bunch of countries on the other."
Fittingly, South Africa, another place trying hard to put history behind it, has sent the biggest contingent to La Grange. It Is a compelling juxtaposition: the New South Africa meets the New South.
At first glance, however, the New South Africa looks a lot like the old one. Just 16 members of the country's 86-strong Olympic team are black, an imbalance accentuated by the unexpected qualification of the (all-white) hockey team.
Expectations that the team might more quickly reflect South Africa's racial mix were unrealistic, says Moss Mashishi, South Africa's deputy chief of mission. "Apartheid was around for over 50 years now and we are not going to undo its effects in four years."
Even so, the Atlanta Games represents another milestone in South Africa's return to the international fold, the first at which its athletes have competed under their own flag and anthem since 1960. (In Barcelona, South Africa competed under the Olympic flag.)
"I feel a lot prouder this time around," says Penny Heyns, the country's 21-year-old swimming star. "In Barcelona I didn't know how to feel. At that age it was difficult to formulate your own opinions and I was still hearing all the negatives from people in South Africa."
The world record holder for 100m breaststroke since March, Heyns is reckoned to be a strong prospect for gold in Atlanta. But giddy from their almost immediate successes in rugby, cricket and football, South Africans will not be content with a single rendition of Nkosi S'Ikele Afrika, their recently "unified" anthem.
"There's a lot of pressure," says Hendrick Ramaala, aged 24, who will compete In the 10,000 metres. "People want medals."
With a personal best more than a minute off the world record, Ramaala will be lucky to get one but his mere participation in Atlanta may be as inspiring to potential black athletes in South Africa as a winning performance by one of the more established white sportsman or woman.
The quietly spoken Witwaatersrand University law student had never run competitively before 1992, preferring to play football in the rural northern Transvaal community where he grew up. When he moved to Johannesburg to study he began taking long jogs through the city "just to release stress and see places".
Three years later he was South African champion in 5,000m and 10,000m and a finalist at the World Championships in Gothenburg. It will not be long before more black South Africans find their way onto the running track, he predicts. "In athletics by the year 2,000 blacks will be dominating the (South African) field."
Modern pentathlete Claude Cloute provides another glimmer of encouragement for those disappointed by the pace of development.
The 26-year-old is the sole survivor of the non-participating youth squad the South Africans sent to Barcelona to breathe some of the Olympic oxygen the country had craved for so long.
He Is what used to be called in apartheid South Africa, "coloured", but in keeping with his country's newly proclaimed colour-blindness he brushes off questions about his race declaring "I am a South African".
Cloute technically failed to qualify for the Olympics when a disastrous riding performance in a Seoul competition ruined a score that could have put him among the world's best. He got to Atlanta on a wild card but shows no shortage of ambition. "I'm going for a medal. This is an opportunity of a lifetime and there Is no point saying we are here to participate.
There have been a few notes of discord in the generally high-spirited South African camp. There was controversy, for instance, over whether Heyns should be allowed to carry the South African flag because of a tattoo on her left arm of a springbok, a symbol associated with the national sides of the apartheid era.
But the swimmer, who trains in Nebraska, insists she is committed to the New South Africa.
