OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Tuesday
SOUTH Africans have begun voting in key local elections in which fear has been the main electoral argument and apathy a possible winner – but upbeat electoral officials are confident of a successful poll.
Analysts predict many of the 19 million eligible voters will not bother to turn out – and the weather did not help, as overnight gales blew down more than half of the tents being used as temporary voting stations around the poverty-stricken Cape Flats.
But Cape Town city manager Andrew Boraine told an early morning news conference: ”In a few places people have been queuing since five o’clock this morning.”
In a country with more than 30% unemployment where access to resources is crucial, control over land, water and electricity is where the real political power lies.
Although 79 parties are fielding 30000 candidates, the only real fight is between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA).
The ANC has promised free water and electricity to the poor, while the DA has promised free anti-retroviral drugs to HIV-infected pregnant women and accused the ANC of being soft on crime and corruption.
Opinion polls show the ANC comfortably ahead in rural areas but facing a tough fight in the cities where the undecided voters are expected to swing the outcome.
Nowhere is the contest expected to be closer than in Cape Town, where both parties have pulled out all the stops in trying to win over the votes of the one million coloured people who form some 60% of the Western Cape’s electorate.
Both parties put forward coloured candidates for the mayor of Cape Town, which in itself accounts for 70% of the provincial electorate.
The DA’s mayoral candidate Peter Marais – a maverick provincial politician openly courted by the ANC in the past – has based his campaign on the simple slogan ”Keep the ANC out”.
ANC mayoral candidate Lynne Brown has run a low key campaign, focusing her efforts on undermining Marais in what pundits said was the hope of persuading the coloured voters to stay at home, which would favour her party.
Both sides have repeatedly accused each other of lying, and their supporters have expended most of their efforts in tearing down each others’ posters. – Reuters