NewsMax Wires
Thursday, Apr. 15, 2004

There is no doubt the ANC -- the African National Congress -- will win handlily and may surpass the 67 percent vote, giving their parliamentary majority the right to change the constitution at whim.

The ANC, a long time Marxist group once clandestinely supported by the Soviet Union, has firmly consoldiated power and may win all nine of the country's provinces, including the KwaZulu Natal province, where the Inkatha Freedom Party narrowly won in 1999.

According to the New York Times, as many as 18 million South Africans voted in the polls Wednesday to choose a new parliament and provincial legislatures.

The final tally is not expected before Friday.

The outcome, however is not in doubt, the Times reported, noting that pre-election polls forecast that the African National Congress could sweep as many as seven in 10 votes throughout South Africa, potentially exceeding the record 66 percent the party won in 1999.

The A.N.C. has ruled South Africa since its first democratic leader, Nelson Mandela, led the party to victory in 1994.

There are only two other major national political parties, the Democratic Alliance, a white-led party that took only 8.6 percent of the vote in 1999, and the Inkatha Freedom Party,(IFP) a regional power with strong ties to ethnic Zulus in KwaZulu-Natal province.

Movement From Democracy

President Thabo Mbeki is moving the country away from democracy -- and critics say he is following in the footisteps of neighboring Zimbabwe where President Robert Mugabe has used the democratic process to establish one party rule and a dictatorship.

Last week, Mr. Mbeki ridiculed "the fictional threat of a one-party state," calling it the creation of a white minority whose survival depends on ginning up opposition to what he called the A.N.C.'s multiracial coalition.

Tony Leon, who heads the Democratic Alliance, told the Times that the A.N.C. was becoming "a de facto one-party state" at great risk of what he called "Putinization" -- the slow erosion of democratic freedoms by a party whose power is hard to resist.

The transition from apartheid to democracy has been a painful one, and the results have been far from positive so far.

South Africa has a staggering unemployment rate. Moreover, about 5.3 million South Africans are infected with AIDS. The gap between rich and poor is huge with more than a third of the black population still living below poverty line.

A government commission study reported that South Africa is one of the countries with most unequal distributions of income in the world. Saidvone liberal South African "Things simply cannot go on like this."

Editor's note: