ANC bags 7, 2 still unclear
2004-04-15 09:10
Johannesburg - South Africa's African National Congress was on Thursday headed for its third straight electoral landslide since the end of apartheid 10 years ago, early results showed.
The ANC, which under Nelson Mandela ended decades of white minority rule, held a commanding lead of 64%, according to results based on 12.2% of all registered ballots.
President Thabo Mbeki's party was on track to clinch a two-thirds majority in the national parliament but the outcome of the races in two of the nine provinces where the ANC is seeking to win outright control remained unclear.
Public opinion polls published in the run-up to the vote showed the ANC could garner as much as 73% of the vote, strengthening its support from 66% in the 1999 elections and 63%in 1994.
"So South Africans trusted Thabo Mbeki and the ANC to rule them for five more years," commented Max du Preez in The Star newspaper while This Day ran the headline: "The Spirit of 1994 Lives On".
Partial results showed the white-based Democratic Alliance was trailing far behind with 19.3% of the vote, although its showing was stronger than in the 1999 elections when it picked up 9.5% of the vote.
Led by Tony Leon, who has warned that South Africa was sliding towards one-party rule, the Democratic Alliance was however expected to see its share of the early returns drop as results from rural areas came in.
In third position, the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party won 3.8% of support but its fate was closely tied to the outcome of the race in its stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal, where it was locked in a battle with the ANC.
The New National Party (NNP), the successor to the National Party which for decades was the backbone of the apartheid regime, picked up a mere 2.39% of the vote, a sharp drop from its showing in the 1994 elections at 20%.
De Lille
A new political party, the Independent Democrats, led by outspoken politician and Aids campaigner Patricia De Lille, won 2.4% of the vote, according to the early results.
Voters cast ballots on Wednesday to elect the 400 members of the national parliament and to renew the provincial legislatures, choosing from 37 political parties including 21 fielding candidates on the national ballot.
The new parliament will convene next week to elect the president, with Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela in 1999, certain to win a second and final five-year mandate.
As voting drew to a close late Wednesday following a day of snaking queues of voters forming outside polling stations and many closing well after the scheduled time of 21:00, there was little suspense surrounding the outcome.
While fears of voting day violence were low, some 40 000 police were deployed at polling stations across the country, half of those in the volatile KwaZulu-Natal province, where thousands were killed in fighting in the runup to the 1994 vote.