South African Party Extends Power (Landslide Victory for ANC and Mbeki)

[mobuto]

OHANNESBURG, April 15 -- The African National Congress strengthened its decade-long grip on power Thursday as election results showed it had extended its majority in the South African Parliament while, on the local level, making apparent gains in one of the two provinces still ruled by its rivals.

With 77 percent of votes counted from Wednesday's national election, the ANC was on the verge of controlling more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, giving it the power to amend the constitution. President Thabo Mbeki, who won a second five-year term because of the ANC victory, has said the party would not change a constitution that it had a lead role in drafting.

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Faring better was the leading opposition group, the Democratic Alliance, whose two component parties got a total of about 10 percent of the vote in 1999 but which was heading toward 13 percent in Thursday's results. Tony Leon, the alliance's leader, said its gains would allow it to be a bulwark against excessive ANC power.

"Our mission is to build an alternative to the ANC government," Leon said in a statement issued by the Democratic Alliance. "Not because we dislike the ANC; they are our political rivals, not our enemies. . . . We believe that the people of South Africa will be better served in a democracy in which power changes hands from time to time, as it does in all the successful democracies in the world."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15757-2004Apr15.html

[David__77]

1. Wonderful!

The national-democratic revolution is still in process in South Africa. It's positive that the ANC and its allies are still united. There has been tension between the ANC and its partners, the Communist Party and the COSATU union because of some neo-liberal economic policies. But I think that in the end things will go well.

I would like to visit there before long.

[mobuto]

2. I'm not sure its so wonderful

I have nothing against the ANC and I can think of a lot worse people South Africa could be run by, but I still think a multiparty, multiracial liberal state is really essential for democracy. That's what I, as an outsider, see the Independent Democrats as trying to establish. The Democratic Alliance, which did very well, might also be able to pull it off if they can effectively cross racial lines -- which seems doubtful.