Johannesburg - South Africans began voting Wednesday in the country's fourth general elections since the end of apartheid, following which controversial African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma is expected to become president.
A little over 23 million people are registered to vote in elections to the 400-seat National Assembly and nine provincial legislatures, 2.4 million more than in the 2004 elections.
The emergence of a new party, the Congress of the People (COPE), from a split in the ANC last year has made these the most exciting since the first euphoric multi-racial elections in 1994.
Johannesburg - South Africa's ruling African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma on Saturday appealed to his opponents to let bygones be bygones after his party was handed a decisive mandate to govern for the next five years, but with a reduced majority. Zuma was speaking after the Independent Electoral Commission in Pretoria announced the ANC had won 65.9 per cent of Wednesday's vote to the National Assembly in Cape Town, which is expected to elect Zuma president within days.
Johannesburg - Jacob Zuma, the leader of South African's African National Congress party and the country's most-likely next president, called Saturday for national unity in a speech after his party was re-elected to a fourth five-year term. "This country belongs to everyone - blacks, whites, Indians and coloured: we must work together," Zuma said in a speech shortly after the country's Independent Electoral Commission announced final results of Wednesday's elections.
Johannesburg - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) won the country's election with a decisive majority according to results Saturday - but fell short of the two-thirds majority it had been batting for. Jacob Zuma's ANC took 65.9 per of votes to the 400-seat National Assembly, against 16.6 per cent for the Democratic Alliance (DA) of Cape Town mayor Helen Zille and a little over 7 per cent for the fledgling Congress of the People, preliminary final results showed.
Johannesburg - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) won the country's election with a decisive majority according to results Saturday - but appeared to have fallen just short of the two-thirds majority it wanted to enable it to change the constitution. With around 99 per cent of votes counted, Jacob Zuma's ANC had 66.2 per cent of votes to the 400-seat National Assembly, against 16 per cent for the Democratic Alliance of Cape Town mayor Helen Zille and 7 per cent for the the fledgling Congress of the People.
Johannesburg - South Africa's ruling African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma said Tuesday he was gunning for a whopping majority in Wednesday's elections, despite competition from a new party of ANC dissidents.
