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A.N.C. Solidifies Lead in Latest South African Vote Count A.N.C. Solidifies Lead in Latest South African Vote Count
(about 7 hours later)
JOHANNESBURG — With counting virtually complete on Friday after South Africa’s fifth all-race elections, results showed the long-governing African National Congress securing another big victory, even though the party fell short of its goal of a two-thirds majority. JOHANNESBURG — As the final ballots of South Africa’s fifth post-apartheid election were being tallied on Friday, the results handed the governing African National Congress a victory with 62 percent of the vote — nearly the same share it won in 1994, the year it assumed power under the late Nelson Mandela in the nation’s first truly democratic election.
The outcome seemed to show that, whatever misgivings South Africans might have about the President Jacob G. Zuma, many were still prepared to display their loyalty to the 102-year-old party that claimed victory over apartheid 20 years ago and cast itself for decades before that as their champion. But the nearly identical results mask glaring differences between the two periods, during which the party has been transformed from a liberation movement that inspired South Africans, as well as Africans on the rest of the continent, to a political party buffeted by corruption, popular disillusionment and widespread complaints that it has strayed from the masses it says it represents.
The Independent Electoral Commission said that, with the vote from almost 99 percent of districts counted, the A.N.C. led with 62.2 percent. That result was in keeping with projections that the party, mired in corruption scandals and headed by the unpopular Mr. Zuma, would shed a few percentage points compared with the last general election, in 2009, when it won 65.9 percent. The A.N.C.'s vision for South Africa earned it 62.7 percent of the vote in 1994, a margin that would keep rising for the following decade. This time, with nearly 100 percent of the ballots counted, the A.N.C.'s share shrank for the second consecutive election to 62.2 percent. Solid as it is, the victory is almost one by default, thanks to the liberation dividend, the political machine established over a generation and the absence of a major rival.
The figures mean that the party is assured of maintaining its commanding majority in the 400-seat Parliament, which formally appoints the president, effectively guaranteeing that Mr. Zuma, who has battled charges of corruption and rape in recent years, will win a second term. South Africa’s Electoral Commission is expected to announce final results on Saturday.
The dominance of the A.N.C. cloaked some important shifts. The Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest party in Parliament, seemed to have increased its share of the vote to around 22 percent from roughly 17 percent in 2009, while the radical Economic Freedom Fighters, led by the populist Julius Malema and running in their first election, were coming in at just over 6 percent, placing the group third, ahead of all other minority challengers. In two northern regions regarded as Mr. Malema’s stronghold, the grouping ran a distant second to the A.N.C., ahead of the Democratic Alliance. In a nation troubled by income inequality and growing frustration among many black South Africans, the A.N.C. ceded the ability to inspire a small but significant share of voters to a 10-month-old party whose leaders, wearing red jumpsuits and military-style berets, pledged to nationalize the nation’s mines and other economic assets without compensation. The party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, vaulted past many older parties to become the nation’s third biggest, with 6.3 percent of the vote.
Mr. Malema sought to draw support from the country’s many unemployed young people, modeling himself on such figures as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Robert G. Mugabe in neighboring Zimbabwe, and promising a huge redistribution of wealth. “Those two percentages mean different things, but they also represent a shift in the direction of the country,” said Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the spokesman for the Economic Freedom Fighters. “In 1994, it meant democratization and the political legitimacy of the A.N.C. That is not what it means now. The percentage is back there precisely because the grounds are shifting towards a different future.”
The near-complete results showed that more than a million South Africans were drawn to his message, voting for Mr. Malema and his red-bereted followers. Some young South Africans — the so-called born frees, who grew up with no exposure to apartheid — were voting for the first time. The results guarantee a second term for President Jacob G. Zuma, an unpopular figure who has faced charges of corruption over the years, including most recently over $23 million in public funds that were spent to upgrade his homestead in Nkandla. The A.N.C. fell short of Mr. Zuma’s stated goal of a two-thirds majority, but came in safely above the psychologically important threshold of 60 percent.
“A million votes,” said Floyd Shivambu, an official in Mr. Malema’s party, “is a great inspiration.” With the victory, Mr. Zuma is expected to press ahead with a business-friendly economic plan focusing on infrastructure and investment, which is opposed by the A.N.C.'s union allies.
A projection by the South African Broadcasting Corporation said the results could yield 23 parliamentary seats for Mr. Malema’s year-old party — a more emphatic entry into the legislature than his critics, and even some of his followers, had predicted. The official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, came in second place, drawing 22.2 percent. By reaching out to black voters, the party, whose base has traditionally consisted of whites and South Africans of mixed race, made significant gains nationally since the 2009 election, when it finished with 17 percent.
While the A.N.C. was likely to lose control of only three seats, with 261, and maintain its control of Parliament, the projection said, the Democratic Alliance could increase its share significantly from 67 seats to 90. In a news conference, its leader, Helen Zille, said that the party’s support among black voters grew to about 6 percent, from less than 1 percent five years ago.
Most of the gains seemed to come at the expense of smaller parties, including the Congress of the People, formed in 2008 to challenge the A.N.C., and the Inkatha Freedom Party, which is rooted in Mr. Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal and was once a powerful force there. The Congress of the People was likely to see its number of seats drop from 30 to two, while the presence of the Inkatha Freedom Party could be halved, from 18 to nine, according to the projection. The A.N.C.'s rivals capitalized on the growing perception that the party pursues the interests of a politically connected class and does not represent the interests of average black South Africans. Youths angry about the living conditions in poor townships have been rioting in “service delivery” protests against the government. Former high-ranking A.N.C. officials have broken away from the party, as have some longtime allies like the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, one of the nation’s biggest trade unions.
Voter turnout was slightly more than 73 percent, the provisional results showed. The ballot was South Africa’s first election since the death in December of Nelson Mandela, who led the party to victory in the first democratic in election in 1994 but served only a single five-year term before stepping down in 1999. The transformation of the A.N.C., the 102-year-old organization often seen as Africa’s greatest liberation movement, has also been regarded with disappointment by many Africans, including some who participated in anti-apartheid activities on college campuses a few decades ago, just as American students did.
South African analysts are also likely to focus on a provincial vote held at the same time as the national election on Wednesday in which the Democratic Alliance maintained its hold on the Western Cape, while other provinces remained under the control of the A.N.C. Abiodun Aremu, secretary of the Joint Action Front, a pro-labor civil coalition in Nigeria, was a leader in Nigeria’s 1980s student movement, which fought for democracy at home and supported the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa.
A.N.C. officials, appearing on television throughout Thursday, seemed relieved at the outcome as a reaffirmation of the party’s enduring dominance. “The A.N.C. represented to us a great hope for the African dream, in terms of building a human society and leading an African renaissance,” Mr. Aremu, 50, said by phone from Lagos, Nigeria. “So in that context, they have come short of our expectations.”
A less resounding victory falling, below the psychologically important level of 60 percent, could have imperiled Mr. Zuma and caused much soul-searching within the party, which now faces a renewed challenge of redeeming promises to improve the lives of millions of South Africans living in townships and shanties where schools and services are poor and jobs are scarce. To many Africans living under authoritarian governments or in shaky democracies, South Africa’s racial reconciliation and peaceful evolution after 1994 was a model. But in the past decade, South Africa has followed the path of other African nations that, after independence, were ruled by an often corrupt elite, said Kayode Soremekun, a professor of international relations at Covenant University in Ota, Nigeria.
“We are quite humbled by the confidence and trust our people have shown,” said Nomvula Mokonyane, an A.N.C. leader who is the premier of Gauteng, according to the South African Press Association. Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg, is the nation’s richest province. “I no longer see the A.N.C. as being a model for the rest of Africa,” Mr. Soremekun said, adding that he now considers a country like Ghana — where two dominant parties peacefully exchange power in a competitive political system — as a more suitable example.
Electoral officials said on Friday that a big turnout in Gauteng had led to delays in providing the results, which were among the last to be tallied. The results of the election here suggest, however, that South Africa is slowly moving in that direction. As more black voters drift away from the A.N.C., and as older voters loyal to the memory of Mr. Mandela give way to the “born free” generation of young voters who have no direct experience of apartheid, a shift could take place.
Helen Zille, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, said there had been instances of ballot papers being thrown out at several locations, apparently after the votes had been counted. She said she was satisfied from investigations by party officials that the ballot papers had been counted first, “but the question is how they were dumped,” she said, according to South African news reports. As a political realignment takes place in South Africa, with major unions possibly forming a party, the A.N.C. will most likely lose power to a coalition of opposition parties, said Aubrey Matshiqi, a political analyst at the Helen Suzman Foundation, a private pro-democracy group in South Africa.
Election officials said that the ballots had been dumped “against standard operating procedure” but that this had not influenced the election outcome. “It is significant that the A.N.C. has fallen to its 1994 threshold,” Mr. Matshiqi said. “If, in 2019, the A.N.C. loses even more support, all we have to speculate about is the number of elections it will take for the A.N.C. to eventually lose power.”
An observer mission from the African Union said on Friday that its preliminary conclusion was that the elections were “free, fair, transparent and credible.
“The elections were also peaceful,” the mission said, and reflected “the wishes and aspirations of South Africans.”