South Africa: Elections: Zuma ANC trounces ex-ANC Mbekists

Africa National Congress, South Africa's only ruling party and government since the collapse of apartheid, has just won new elections (the 4th round since the change-over fron minority rule under the hegemonic white racist regime). But in the process the party split with the with the old ANC leadership under Thabo Mbeki (the AIDS denier) and came under the spell of a dubious character of great charisma, Jakob Zuma. The Zuma ANC won the elections by 12 million--despite a corrupton trial!

South Africans voted in general and provincial elections on April 22nd, the fourth chance they have all had to do so since the birth of democracy in 1994. After months of increasingly feverish punditry in the domestic media about the country’s political trajectory, the people finally got their chance to speak at the ballot box. So what did they say?

The first message was that the poll mattered to them. The total number of ballots cast had not been officially released at the time of writing, but the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) reckons 77% of 23 million registered voters voted on Wednesday. That’s 17.71 million people, 13.5% higher then the 15.34 million voters recorded in 2004.

The national population growth rate, ravaged as it is by deaths from HIV/Aids, is estimated at just 0.28% a year, so the increase cannot be explained by that alone.
The reason for the high turnout was that people cared deeply about the outcome.

ANC supporters turned out in their masses to re-elect the party, with an estimated 12 million people voting for the party this time round, two million more then last time. One reason for this substantial growth is the ANC’s determination to trounce a new party contesting elections for the first time, the Congress of the People (Cope). Cope was formed last November by prominent members of an ANC faction that had supported former president Thabo Mbeki, but which was routed by a rival faction supporting Jacob Zuma at an ANC General Congress in Polokwane in December 2007. Mbeki lost the ANC’s presidency at Polokwane, and all his supporters were voted off the National Executive Committee (NEC). Although he was beaten in the presidential contest, Mbeki still took 40% of the vote. If all that support could be translated into electoral support for Cope, the ANC had a real crisis on its hands.

Read the whole article in openDemocracy by clicking this blog-entry's title; "South Africans have voted. What did they say? by GHregory Mthembu-Salter (Ap24,2k9).

-- Politicarp