The ruling African National Congress (ANC) will win ”decisive” support in next week’s general elections, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday, adding a ”great mood of optimism about the future” had swept the country.
Speaking during an interview with 702 Talk Radio, Mbeki warned against violence in the volatile eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, which is being hotly contested between the ANC and the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
The ANC ”will get decisive support from the population,” Mbeki said.
”I was struck by the great mood of optimism [during the campaign trail] among the people about the future of this country.
”They will tell you what the problems are, but there is great certainty that the situation will be better tomorrow,” Mbeki said, less than a week before millions of South Africans go to the polls on April 14.
He said large contingents of soldiers and police officers had been deployed to KwaZulu-Natal, where some 12 000 people were killed in the run-up to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994.
”Given the history of the province and the intensity of the contest there, it is inevitable that there will be people who act wrongly.
”It is really necessary that all the political organisations concentrate their message against violence and intimidation,” Mbeki told 702.
He also laid into a electoral agreement by South Africa’s largest — and mainly white — opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) with the Zulu-national IFP.
The agreement, said Mbeki, was ”a right-wing coalition that will not resolve the problems of poverty in South Africa.”
He said the DA misread voters in trying to equate the ANC government with that of the ruling Zanu-PF in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where critics say the country’s controversial land reforms have driven hundreds of previously commercial white farmers from their land to make way for landless blacks.
”White voters are not as ready to be frightened as they were ten years ago,” said Mbeki.
The president insisted that negotiations were underway between Harare and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
”There are very simple, straightforward problems of politics and economics to be solved in Zimbabwe. Both sides are engaged in this right now. It is question of reaching an agreement and implementing that agreement,” Mbeki said. – Sapa-AFP