OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday
WITH just over six million votes counted in South Africa’s key local government elections, the ruling African National Congress has wrested control of 24 local councils countrywide, double that of the opposition Democratic Alliance – but the DA is looking ominous in the hotly-contested Western Cape.
By Wednesday morning, the ANC had 54% of the popular vote to the DA’s 35%. However, voter turnout was a disappointing 48%, ranging from about 40% in the Northern Province and 62% in the Western Cape.
The Inkatha Freedom Party had four percent, and most of the other parties represented in Parliament one percent each.
The Democratic Alliance won seven out of eight wards in the predominantly coloured area of Mitchell’s Plain, according to its deputy leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
In other areas of the Cape Town metropole, the DA won all of the 13 wards in the Southern Peninsula, six out of nine in Oostenberg, all but one of the five in Helderberg and all in Blaauwberg, said Van Schalkwyk.
The DA also claimed control over Worcester, Ceres and Mossel Bay.
Richard Calland, a political analyst at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, said that from preliminary results it appeared the DA had done well in traditionally coloured areas.
If that trend continued, there would be a decisive victory for the DA in the Western Cape, he said, according to an Independent Electoral Commission statement.
Officials said the polling was generally trouble-free, although gunmen shot six people dead in a squatter camp near Johannesburg during voting, and some parties charged voting irregularities in some centres.
The ANC claimed that one person voted 14 times at a polling station in eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, and at least four polling officials were suspended around the country.
President Thabo Mbeki congratulated political parties for “making sure that today we will indeed produce a free and fair election.”
“Whoever has won, whatever the odds … it is a victory for the democratic system in the interests of all of our people,” he said. – AFP