With most of the votes in South Africa's general elections released today, the ruling African National Congress of Jacob Zuma was teetering just below a two-thirds majority, according to dpa. Results trickling in from Wednesday's national and provincial elections to the Independent Electoral Commission's counting centre in Pretoria showed the ANC with 66.45 per cent, against 16 per cent for the biggest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) of Cape Town mayor Helen Zille. Final results were expected late Friday evening. A little over 23 million people were registered to vote in the simultaneous elections to the 400-seat National Assembly and nine provincial legislatures. While no overall turnout figure was available before the end of counting, turnout at the voting stations for which results had been announced was around 77 per cent. With under 2 million votes left to be counted, the ANC had 66.45 per cent, against 16 per cent for the biggest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. The ANC won 70 per cent in the last election, against 12 per cent for the DA. The new Congress of the People, a breakaway party of ANC dissidents formed last year after the ANC's ousting of Thabo Mbeki as president, was trailing a distant third at 7.5 per cent. As leader of the biggest party, Zuma, who faced trial for alleged corruption in an arms deal until a few weeks ago when prosecutors abruptly dropped the charges, is poised to become South Africa's fourth democratically-elected president. He follows in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, the country's caretaker president of the last seven months since Mbeki's resignation. The DA had led calls for voters to deny the ANC a two-thirds majority, saying the party might be tempted to use its tally to push through amendments to the country's celebrated 1996 constitution. The ANC has rubbished those fears, pointing out that the party has enjoyed a more-than-two-thirds majority for the past five years and not used it to stifle dissent. On Thursday, Zuma led thousands of ANC supporters in song and dance at a victory rally outside party headquarters in downtown Johannesburg. The ANC planned another celebratory party in Soweto township on Friday. After the elections, the newly-constituted National Assembly in Cape Town will sit to elect Zuma as president.
