HUGH NEVILL, Johannesburg | Thursday
SOUTH African politics has entered a new phase with the emergence of the Democratic Alliance (DA) as genuine opposition to President Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) in this week’s local government elections, say analysts.
“What is worrying is that people have voted along class and race lines,” said Richard Calland of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa. “The middle classes have voted for the DA and blacks have voted for the ANC. Lower class people also voted in fewer numbers than wealthy white voters.”
With 14,5 million ward and proportional votes counted on Thursday morning, the ANC had 59% and the DA 23%, prompting analysts to declare that post-apartheid South Africa – dominated so far by the ANC – was on the road to becoming a two-party state for the first time.
Later returns from rural areas were expected to increase the ANC’s share of the vote, but DA leader Tony Leon calculated that his party would win 24% of the vote countrywide once all votes were in.
The DA has now captured 16 councils, the IFP 10 and the ANC 106 councils, according to IEC figures published on Thursday morning. There are 284 new municipalities at stake, down from the 843 inherited from the apartheid era.
In the first post-apartheid municipal elections in 1995, the ANC won 66% and the two parties that make up the DA won a combined 19%.
Analysts Glen Steyn and Mozi Sikhakhane, speaking on SABC television, pointed out that the apparent surge in support for the DA was due largely to turnout.
They said the DA’s supporters – mainly whites and coloureds – turned out in large numbers, but that many black ANC supporters stayed home.
Analyst Sean Jacobs of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa said the voting seemed to confirm Mbeki’s statement that the racial divide in South Africa was so big that the country was one of two nations – one black and one white.
“But in a strange way this turns what Mbeki said on its head because the turn-out in this election shows that the whites have become part of the new democracy,” he said.
“They have realised that they can use their vote to achieve something, even if it is to block the ANC, while black voters are the ones who have stayed away and seem to have fallen out of the system.” – AFP