OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Monday
SOUTH Africa’s local government elections will represent the first major political test of the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, a year-and-a-half after he succeeded Nelson Mandela – but analysts believe the biggest vote is likely to go to apathy.
Campaigning has been uninspiring and largely negative, and election pundits are predicting a huge stay away among the 19 million registered voters when the polls open on Tuesday.
The vote will also demonstrate the real impact of the opposition merger which created the Democratic Alliance (DA) from the Democratic Party led by Tony Leon, the opposition leader in parliament, and the New National Party, which was in power under apartheid.
The voting will show whether the DA manages to reach beyond its traditional electorate, the whites and coloureds and attract black voters.
All polls predict an erosion in support for the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which won 66% of the vote in general elections in June 1999 – but that will not prevent the ANC from dominating the vast majority of the 284 new municipalities which will replace the 843 inherited from the apartheid regime.
Opinion polls show the ANC comfortably ahead in most rural areas but running neck-and-neck in the cities, where undecided voters will almost certainly sway the result.
Attention will be focused on key municipalities, particularly the battle for Cape Town, the only big city ruled by the opposition, and where the ANC has pulled out all stops in its campaign.
The ANC’s domination of South Africa’s political landscape is under no threat, but observers will be following with interest the extent of disaffection with the party among black voters, impatient at the slow pace of improvement of their living conditions since the end of apartheid in 1994.
At its closing rally the DA lashed out at the ANC, accusing it of fielding candidates unfit to hold office, of letting crime and corruption run riot and the cities it controls decay.
The previous day, ANC mayoral candidate Lynne Brown had told a rally of around 5 000 supporters near Cape Town that the DA cared nothing for the poor.
The ANC also wheeled out its favourite son and international icon of racial reconciliation, Nelson Mandela, to drive home its point.
”No white party can run this country…no matter how they cover up by getting a few black stooges, they (the whites) remain the bosses…they remain a white party,” he told a union rally. – AFP/Reuters