JOHANNESBURG : Ten years after the end of apartheid, South Africa holds its third democratic elections on Wednesday with President Thabo Mbeki's ANC party set to sweep to victory.
The African National Congress, which under Nelson Mandela ended decades of white minority rule, could even clinch a two-thirds majority in parliament and is waging a fierce battle to take the only two of the nine provinces where it does not hold sway.
As they head to the polls on Wednesday, South Africa's 21 million voters will be reminded that despite poverty and AIDS, the country has fared well during its first decade of rebirth as a nation.
Above all, it has managed to avert a civil war that was predicted when the apartheid regime was consigned to history in 1994, and has emerged as a stable democracy.
The ANC "will get decisive support from the population," Mbeki confidently declared during the campaign that saw little challenge to the governing party from the weak and fractured opposition.
"I was struck by the great mood of optimism among the people about the future of this country.
"They will tell you what the problems are, but there is great certainty that the situation will be better tomorrow," Mbeki said.
Polls predict that the ANC could garner as much as 73 percent of the vote, up from 66 percent in the 1999 elections and 62.7 percent in 1994.
While few fear violence on voting day, some 40,000 police have nevertheless been deployed at polling stations around the country, most of them in the volatile KwaZulu-Natal province.
The Zulu-dominated province was the scene of violence in the runup to the 1994 elections, with some 12,000 people killed in fighting between supporters of the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
The province is also one of the key battlegrounds, along with Western Cape province, where the ANC hopes to win a clear majority.
South Africans will on Wednesday cast ballots to elect the 400-seat parliament and members to the legislatures of the nine provinces, choosing from a total of 37 parties including 21 fielding candidates on the national level.
The new parliament will convene on April 23 in Cape Town to elect the president, with Mbeki widely expected to win a second and final term in office.
Mbeki, 61, is seen as a pragmatist who, while lacking the charisma and magic of Mandela, has succeeded in keeping South Africa on an even keel as the continent's economic giant and power broker.
As leader, he has been criticised for his late response to the AIDS crisis that kills 600 people a day, and his failure to persuade President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, South Africa's most important neighbor, to end his repressive policies.
A survey released by the marketing and opinion poll company Markinor on the eve of the vote showed that Mbeki ranked first as South Africa's most trusted politician, well ahead of other politicians.
The survey also revealed that a whopping 72 percent of respondents described themselves as ANC supporters, with that figure going up to 78 percent in the 18 to 24 age group.
As he heads into a second term in office, Mbeki faces increasing pressure to deliver on AIDS and also to provide jobs and alleviate poverty as the euphoria surrounding the liberation gives way to more concrete demands for a better life.
Mbeki himself has acknowledged that more needs to be done to tackle unemployment, officially at 31 percent, and to bridge the divide separating poor blacks struggling in shantytowns from affluent whites and black nouveaux-riches.
Opposition parties have taken shots at the ANC for failing to live up to its promises of more housing and for its delayed reaction in the fight against AIDS but they have all seemed to accept the ANC's electoral victory as a foregone conclusion.
Tony Leon's Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party, is expected to take just 10 percent of the vote.
The New National Party (NNP), the successor to the National Party which for decades was the backbone of the apartheid regime, is fighting for its political survival in these elections after seeing its support base dwindle from 20 percent in 1994 to only 6.9 percent in the last elections in 1999.
- AFP
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