South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) began to celebrate its biggest election win yesterday, taking on what may be as big a challenge as it faced when apartheid ended 10 years ago: securing economic power for its black majority.
With ballots in from more than three-quarters of the country's polling stations, the former liberation movement had captured nearly 70 percent of the vote -- exceeding its score in the two previous democratic polls and virtually guaranteeing it a coveted two-thirds majority in parliament.
This gives the African National Congress the right to amend the Constitution at will. But it also piles more pressure on its leaders to solve the problems which keep most of South Africa's 45 million people poor -- high unemployment, AIDS and crime.
"The voters have given the ANC a vibrant mandate to pursue the final liberation of South Africa," said Joe Maswanganyi, a senior ANC member in northern Limpopo province.
"People now have political freedom but we're far from economic emancipation. Until blacks have economic power, the ANC will remain a liberation movement," Maswanganyi said.
South Africa's economy -- the biggest in Africa -- is growing faster than it did under apartheid, and now has solid financial credentials. But income disparities are still among the widest in the world, unemployment stands at a staggering 40 percent and the economy is still run largely by whites.
President Thabo Mbeki has promised a million new jobs over the next five years, spending US$15 billion on public works and transport and telecommunications infrastructure.
If the government fails to deliver in the eyes of its loyal electorate, it may finally start to lose support.
Wednesday's election did not hand the ANC its stated goal of making a clean sweep of all nine of the country's provinces, and unexpected gains by the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) show there may be viable alternatives in the years to come.
"We believe the people of South Africa will be better served in a democracy in which power changes hands from time to time, as it does in all the successful democracies of the world," DA leader Tony Leon told celebrating supporters late on Thursday.
"We remain committed to this mission," Leon said.
Leon said the DA was looking forward to governing the hotly contested province of KwaZulu-Natal in a coalition with the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, the ANC's main black opponent.
Partial results from the province showed the two parties combined had an eight percentage point lead over the ANC, which still managed to get the biggest single percentage of the vote.
Fears that the traditional hotspot would erupt into violence proved unfounded, despite scattered accusations of intimidation and fraud. Officials sent soldiers to the Zulu heartland to keep a lid on political tensions.
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