Millions of South Africans enthusiastically queued to vote in their third post-apartheid election yesterday, with the African National Congress expected to return to power in a landslide.
With the ANC likely to win overwhelmingly on the back of its enduring popularity as the party that ended white rule, the only questions seemed to be the size of its victory and whether it could take a clean sweep of all nine provinces.
LONG QUEUES
Electoral officials reported long queues at many of the 17,000 polling stations around the country, an indication of high turnout among more than 20 million registered voters, who still cherish their decade of democracy.
President Thabo Mbeki, set to win a second five-year term, and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela were among early voters who cast their ballots after polls opened at 7am.
"I feel elated that I can ... assert my right as a citizen," said Mandela, who spent 27 years in jail for fighting white rule before leading the ANC to power in 1994.
Nobel prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu voted with his wife Leah in Cape Town.
"Often they say the first election after democracy is the last. Many countries degenerate into dictatorships. We are disproving that," he said.
The Nobel laureate dismissed fears that the ANC would amend the constitution and entrench virtual one-party rule if it won the two-thirds parliamentary majority it wants.
"We have in place many institutions which will guard against abuse of power," he said.
MBEKI FIRST
Mbeki jumped a small queue to be first to cast his vote in the capital, Pretoria, where he said South Africa was ready for peaceful, orderly elections.
"The politicians have been doing a lot of talking ... it's now time for the people to speak," Mbeki said.
Pollsters say the outcome of the vote is not in doubt with the ANC expected to consolidate its dominance in the absence of any party that rivals its appeal to majority black voters.
The former liberation movement hopes to win over the only two provinces it does not control outright and grab a bigger majority despite chronic poverty, a 40 percent jobless rate and the scourge of AIDS -- affecting one in nine South Africans.
"The ANC has historical and political capital which other parties lack ... and failures can still be blamed on the legacy of apartheid," Vista University analyst Sipho Seepe told reporters.
Tony Leon, leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, told reporters: "The voter is sovereign ... I have every faith and confidence in their judgment by which I will obviously abide."
Altogether 37 political parties are contesting the election at either the national or provincial level.
At one of six polling stations in Diepsloot, a Johannesburg ghetto of makeshift shacks and small houses, black voters waited patiently in a queue nearly two km long.
Andrew, 27, was at the front of the queue after waiting since 4 am.
"It's very important to vote because I remember where I came from," he said.
With the national race all but won by the ANC, attention has focused on the restive province of KwaZulu-Natal, where the ruling party faces one of its sharpest local challenges from the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).
TEMPERS FLARE
Tempers frayed at a polling station near the home of IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi after Mbeki's Defence Minister and ANC national chairman Mosiuoa Lekota turned up unexpectedly as Buthelezi was due to arrive.
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