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South Africa: Zuma's Home Province Saves ANC
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Cape Town — The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has won South Africa's national election with a slightly reduced majority, narrowly failing to achieve the two-thirds majority that would enable it to change the country's Constitution unilaterally.
Although the party lost votes across the board in most provinces, the losses were largely offset by a dramatic leap in support in KwaZulu-Natal, home province of the ANC's leader, Jacob Zuma - at the expense of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
But in the Western Cape, centred on Cape Town, the ANC suffered as calamitous a setback as did the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal, losing control of the province to the official opposition, the Democratic Party.
The formal announcement of the election results was made by Hlophe Bam, the chair of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), on Saturday afternoon, South African time.
Figures released by the IEC showed that 77 percent of South Africa's 23.1 million voters went to the polls, and that 11.6 million (65.9 percent) of them voted for the ANC. In the 2004 elections, the ANC's majority was close to 70 percent.
Although the party lost its two-thirds majority, Zuma made it clear on the eve of the election that the party in any event had no plans to change the Constitution.
The second-placed party in the national election was the official opposition in the last Parliament, the Democratic Alliance, which drew 2.9 million votes, improving its share of the total from 12.4 to 16.7 percent.
But it is likely that the party most responsible for taking votes away from the ANC outside KwaZulu-Natal was the Congress of the People (COPE), launched last December by ANC leaders unhappy with the direction the party was taking under Zuma. COPE pulled 1.3 million votes (7.4 percent), giving it third place nationally.
Credits; allAfrica
One-Minute World News
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