The pre-dawn streets of Pretoria are filled with flashing blue lights and police sirens as the city prepares for Jacob Zuma's presidential inauguration.

On our bus's TV, a Bollywood actress is rolling across an emerald lawn to a love song. Her performance is apparently being screened to entertain its usual passengers – the Indian Premier League cricketers playing their matches in South Africa instead of back home.

Today, however, the bus is filled with sleepy journalists on their way to the Union Buildings and our wait for the presidential ceremony to begin.

We are dropped off in the darkness 3km from where we are supposed to be. 

"Why?" we ask.  The officials and police shrug their shoulders. 

It is our first indication of how the day will be. 

We lug our heavy equipment across the lawns and up on to the scaffold far away from the main proceedings.  Shortly after we set up the rain starts to thunder down.

No one had thought to provide a roof for the camera crews and their equipment, so it was impossible to broadcast  because of the risk. 

Our only consolation was that the VIPs in the amphitheatre of the Union Buildings were also getting drenched as they tried to huddle together under umbrellas.

Finally, though, the sun comes out, we dry our equipment and the heads of state arrive.

Cheers from the damp but enthusiastic crowd greet Muammar Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe and the North Korean representative. 

A frail, but dignified Nelson Mandela is cheered every time his image appears on the large screens set up for the crowds.

The man who followed him as the country's leader, Thabo Mbeki, is booed with a deep angry roar. 

And then, the man himself arrives; the cheers are defeaning. Jacob Zuma is their hero. The man they came to see.

He takes the oath and the crowd goes wild as the planes from the now traditional fly-past roar overhead.

President Zuma’s speech is dignified and reconciliatory. 

He speaks of wanting to re-invigorate South African society with the values of the Mandela era.  He also speaks highly of Mbeki, his arch-rival in a battle for political power which lasted seven years. 

Zuma, the victor, then descends to the lawn where his people are gathered.

There is not a single white South African in the crowd, which is  made up almost entirely of the black poor - the power behind Zuma.  They believe he will change their lives for the better. 

He did not sing his trademark anthem ‘Umshini Wam’ or ‘Bring me my machine gun.’  He is president now, no longer a revolutionary.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – The bikers on their Harley-Davidsons were the first surprise. They roared down the street on their slick expensive machines to the sound of bellowing exhausts and equally thunderous approval from the crowds of ANC supporters who had gathered in downtown Johannesburg to await the arrival of their hero, Jacob Zuma.

Zuma (center) jumps in the air as he celebrates on stage with supporters.

The next surprise was the skinny transvestite in the miniskirt dancing with a poster in and out among the journalists and waving to the crowd.

They were both symbolic of the diversity and freedom that exists in this country that was once ruled by the deeply conservative, right-wing values of the apartheid regime.

The bikers, in particular, symbolize the paradox of the African National Congress's hold on South African society.

Their arrival was, at the same time, both a celebration and flaunting of wealth in the face of the poor. The wealthy bikers represent the wealthy black elite that supports the ANC.

They have benefited most visibly from the organization's hold on power since the first democratic elections; the poor lining the streets and cheering them, have benefited the least – and yet, such economically different groups of people still feel bound together by a common loyalty to the ANC.

It is a paradox that the opposition parties, even the newest one, a breakaway from the ANC called Congress of the People, or COPE, seem unable to exploit.

Not all the votes are in yet, but it is clear that the ANC is set for a landslide victory.

As their president Jacob Zuma took the stage to roars of approval from his jubilant supporters, as the champagne corks popped, and the fireworks soared into the night air above the skyscrapers of downtown Johannesburg, it was clear that the ANC has lost nothing of the massive electoral power it has held since Nelson Mandela was elected as the first president of a democratic South Africa in 1994.

Still, there is a tiny chink visible in their armor. Roughly one in three South Africans did not vote for the ANC – and they are made up of all races and classes.

The ANC rules supreme, but not without some meaningful resentment left in its wake.

Still, two in every three South Africans did vote for them – and they are the ones celebrating tonight.

Zuma is the pivot of this country's political future. And yet, his broad smiles and celebratory dancing cannot hide the fact that things are not quite as simple as they might look.

His detractors probably fear him too much; while his supporters certainly believe in him too uncritically.

He has won a huge victory tonight. He rules the hearts and minds of most South Africans, but how will he govern them?

Underneath the razzmatazz and champagne, many questions remain about Zuma and how he will lead South Africa.

As one man said to me on the streets of Johannesburg tonight. "The ANC will have to work very hard. Things will not be so easy for them anymore. If they don't succeed, maybe Zuma will be thrown out like Mbeki was."

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Standing in the queue waiting to vote, I allowed myself a few moments to reflect on some childhood memories.

Voters queue up in Soweto on Wednesday.

The polling station I am registered at is the primary school I attended in the 1960s and 1970s, and just exactly where I was standing was where, every morning and afternoon, one of the younger relatives of the Shah of Iran would roll up with his driver and bodyguard in a Rolls Royce.

He was a popular kid and I have often wondered what happened to him in the tumultuous decades that have followed since the revolution in Iran.

It was another world then, South Africa at the height of apartheid and the Shah resplendent on his magnificent throne. Both have long since disappeared into history.

Standing there in front of my old school, I thought of how much has changed in South Africa. Back in those days I didn't understand much of politics, but I did know that apartheid was wrong.

I remember watching, as a little boy, about 10 years old, with a mixture of fear and innocent outrage as a van-load of police came onto the school grounds.

They headed for the compound where the black workers who cooked our lunches and tended the grounds lived. They were looking for black people who didn't have the correct "passes" - papers that allowed them to live and work in white areas.

There wasn't much we boys could do, but I remember that some of the older kids jeered at the police as they took away two or three black men whose papers apparently weren't in order.

The brutality of apartheid is still very much alive in the collective mind of South Africa's people, so to stand in a long line of black and white people waiting patiently together to vote remains an emotional experience for most of us.

To watch South Africans vote is to see them at their best. There have been a handful of unpleasant incidents: a hundred or so pre-marked ballot papers were found in Kwa-Zulu Natal; there have been one or two angry protests, and one election official was shot in the leg by an armed robber.

Crime and corruption are big problems in the country today, as is entrenched poverty and joblessness. Many of the elite feel dismay that the country's constitution and the rule of law have been threatened by the long saga of ANC President Jacob Zuma's corruption trial; many of the country's poor, on the other hand, feel rage at how little their circumstances have changed since the ending of apartheid.

However, when we look back at the divisions that apartheid created and the rage that existed at its unfairness, it remains a miracle that South Africans are here today 15 years after the first democratic election in 1994, still voting tolerantly and peacefully, still queuing under the African sun for hours, laughing and joking with one another - and still believing that their vote can make a difference to the country they now share.

MOMBASA, Kenya - The train that had hit the container truck was a bad start to our search for dock 13 - the berthing space for the Maersk Alabama.The crumpled steel of the shipping container was crunched up across the dockyard railway lines causing a seething, angry traffic jam.

We abandoned our minibus and walked through the humid East African afternoon towards the quay. Nearby the Pirate Bar, complete with skull and crossbones motif above the window, was closed for business - a sign of the times perhaps.

The Maersk officials directed us to where the rest of the media were gathering while forklift trucks placed more shipping containers in front of us so that we would have no contact with the crew.

It was dark by the time we saw the first lights of the Maersk Alabama slowly gliding into port. Soon the tugboat was pushing its stern up against the dock, and many of the crew were standing on the decks looking somewhat bemused at the media gaggle on the dock below them.

"How did you feel when the pirates came on board?" colleague Stan Grant asked one man. "Scared," he replied. "What about Capt. Philips?" someone else shouted out. "A very brave man," another sailor said.

All the while, armed men in camouflage and flak jackets moved up and down the steel steps that connect the decks.

Later another sailor put his arm around his shipmate. "He's the real hero. He jumped one of the pirates. Took him down to the engine room and jumped him there!"

Snippets of fear, bravery, and hope shouted out into the hot African night. Fragments of a story still to be fully told. Happiness for these sailors tonight. But as one of them angrily shouted out: "There's still a man out there on a boat who may be dead."

Capt. Richard Phillips. His story is unfolding in the open seas. Invisible to the world, his fate uncertain.

"No," Hugh Masekela said to me. "Not that way, if you get your feet wrong, then everything's wrong.

Legendary musician Hugh Masekela shows CNN around Johannesburg.

It's not every day you get to do tai chi with an international music superstar, but "Bra" – "brother" Hugh, as he is known affectionately in South Africa's streets and townships, is not a man to stand on ceremony.

I was shooting an episode of "My City, My Life" on Bra Hugh and his Johannesburg and we were waiting while cameramen, Chevan Rayson and Shadley Lombard set up the lights to do a long interview with him.

"Come on," Bra Hugh said, and before I knew it, I was doing my best to follow him around the hotel room floor as he moved in a light, almost balletic series of movements. It was an impressive display for a man turning 70.

I spent three nearly full days with Bra Hugh - and they were one of the highlights of my career. With humour and unstoppable enthusiasm, he showed us his Johannesburg and Soweto, with a side trip to Witbank township where he grew up. See Hugh Masekela's Johannesburg

He took us to The Bantu Men's Social Centre, an old building in the south of downtown Johannesburg. It is an elegant brick building, erected in the 1920s and overlooked both by modern skyscrapers and the old rusting headgear of the original gold mines.

 "Here," he told us on the sidewalk. "Is where I met Miriam." (Makeba) The two of them went on to live in exile in the US and become probably South Africa's most famous musicians.

He took us through the famous old Dorkay House. Once a smart office building where the liberal white owners allowed Hugh and other black musicians to practice and gather.

Now it is a run-down slum where people live cheek-by-jowl separated by cardboard partitions. Bra Hugh looked around him sadly. "Not everything here has changed for the better," he said. "These people's lives have not changed much."

Amidst the joy of his music, there is a sadness in his conversation that echoes how so many people feel in South Africa today, which is beset by such a terrible crime rate. "Can music heal?" I asked him while he was rehearsing in his studio.

He put down his trumpet gleaming with light. "This whole nation needs therapy," he replied.

The next day we went to where it all began. The beautiful manicured gardens of what is now St. Martin's College. It was once called St. Peter's and was run by the famous Archbishop Trevor Huddleston who was so outspoken against racism in South Africa.

Bra Hugh gave us an hilarious demonstration of how, as a young new boy at the school, he had to rush around the dining hall clearing the older students' plates.

Then he took us to where Trevor Huddleston had given him his very first trumpet. It is a nondescript small office, but the memories of that small beginning echo as loudly as his famous songs.

Bra Hugh looked fondly around the school chapel. "These were the greatest years of my life," he said.

Soon, though, the cruelty of apartheid closed in on St. Peter's and on Bra Hugh. The school was closed and Bra Hugh went into exile.

It's been a long road for him from South Africa, to America, to Ghana and finally back home to Johannesburg. But the music has always been with him. "Where does your music come from?' I asked him.

He looked at me and smiled. "It's not my music, music is like air. It's there for everybody."

NAIROBI, Kenya - "Pirates on the shore wanted a tip from the pirates on the Sirius Star, so they started to fire in the air as our people approached the land," said the pirate on a crackling cell phone.We sat hunched over a camera in the Nairobi bureau, a microphone taped to the receiver.

A parachute floats down to the Sirius Star after being dropped by a small aircraft.

"When our pirates heard the shots they thought they would be robbed so they tried to return to the tanker. In that quick turn the boat capsized."

"Are you happy with how the Sirius Star hijacking went?"

"No, we lost our comrades."

We had our pirate interview. And he told us a story, not just rant as they often do.

So, how do you get hold of a pirate in Somalia? Well, you just call them up. But their number is not listed in the Nairobi white pages. Believe me, I checked.

The whispers started floating in on Friday afternoon from our sources in Somalia that pirates were releasing the giant Sirius Star.

CNN's newsgathering resources kicked in. The bureau in Nairobi, the International Desk in Atlanta, our sources in Kenya and Somalia - it was all hands on deck to confirm the story.

We soon found out there was something wrong. "Five pirates have drowned," a reliable source told us "the boat will be only released tomorrow."

Here was our chance to get hold of the pirates. I put in the word that we wanted to talk to a pirate.

"Considering how badly it went," I said, "I am sure they want to tell us exactly what happened."

So we waited. A full day passed.

"They might talk to you today," said our contact in Somalia, "but they are very busy counting the money."

When a pirate captures a ship and gets a ransom they don't just take their millions and deposit it at their local branch. First, they split the money with the scores of pirates who guarded the ship. Then, they must pay the contractors who supplied food to the hostages, the elders who overlook their criminal activities, the creditors who help finance their escapades.

"OK, they might talk, but only tomorrow," says the contact, "you will speak to a pirate that was on the Sirius Star when the others drowned. Be ready at 10 a.m. to call him."

We get the number and wait another night.

We dial the number the next morning.

"Sorry, the number you have dialed is incorrect."

We dial again ... nothing.

Finally, we figure out a way to do it. Let's call it a trade secret.

"My name is Libaan Jaama," he says.

We have our story.

CNN – The conviction and sentencing of Colonel Theoniste Bagasora is a milestone as it marks the first time those responsible for the Rwandan genocide have been brought to Justice. Bagasora was accused of masterminding the 100-day terror spree that left 800,000 to 1 million Rwandans dead in 1994. Bagasora was Cabinet Director at the Ministry of Defense. He took over the political and military leadership after the plane carrying Rwanda’s president was shot down in April 1994, which set off the genocide.

Today, the judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, read the chilling charges and the verdict: guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Sentence: life in prison.

Two other military officers were found guilty of the same charges and also sentenced to life in prison. One was acquitted.  

In 1994, men women and children across the country were hacked, clubbed or shot to death, including Rwanda’s prime minister, and 10 Belgian U.N. peacekeepers. The head of the U.N. Force, former Canadian general Romeo Dallaire called Bagasora the “kingpin” and said he had threatened his life with a handgun. Dallaire had been warned by his informants that extremist Hutus, like Bagasora, were planning the genocide and he tried repeatedly to warn his bosses at the U.N., but the world looked away and did nothing to stop the killings.

The wheels of justice have been slow to turn. It has taken six years to reach today’s verdict. At one time tens of thousands of Rwandans were swept up and thrown in jail but there was no way that country could process all the accused.

A system of community courts called ga-cha-chas have brought thousands of perpetrators face to face with their victims’ families to describe their crimes and beg forgiveness. National reconciliation is Rwanda’s official policy. Perhaps that is a step closer today, as the International Court finally brings to justice those at the top of the chain of command.