South Africa's Mbeki vows to deliver after record poll landslid

Sat Apr 17, 5:37 PM ET

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - President Thabo Mbeki vowed to carry on
"reconstruction and development" in South Africa as final results
confirmed his party had won a record 70 percent
AFP

The African National Congress (news - web sites) took 69.68 percent of
vote and improved its standing in all nine of the country's provinces, the
Independent Electoral Commission said Saturday.

The main opposition Democratic Alliance, led by Tony Leon, a tough-talking
white, was way behind with 12.37 percent of the ballot and short of the 17
percent he had earlier promised.

The Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party was in third place with 6.97
percent.

Mbeki, set to take office for a second and last term following the
country's third elections after the demise of apartheid, said Wednesday's
peaceful elections were a sign that the nascent democracy had matured.

"I have no hesitation in saying that these elections were truly free and
fair," he said at a glitzy ceremony where the results were formally
announced.

He thanked South Africans "for their refusal to be provoked or incited to
engage in acts of violence and intimidation," saying they had "set a
benchmark in terms of what our country must always do to respect the
diversity of opinion."

He also urged the new lawmakers "as we begin our second decade of
liberation (to) know that what the electorate expects of them is to do
everything in their power to secure a better life for all our people."

"I wish them success in their important work that must help our country to
register new advances ... as we continue to pursue the goals of
reconstruction and development."

Although Mbeki injected some health into the economy in his first term,
poverty is still an acute problem and unemployment hovers between 40 and
50 percent

At a victory party a day earlier, Mbeki promised his countrymen that he
would deliver on ambitious electoral promises: to create one million new
jobs in five years; to spend 100 billion rand (15 billion dollars / 12
billion euros) to improve infrastructure and to halve poverty and
unemployment by 2014.

Brigalia Bam, the chairwoman of the Independent Electoral Commission
Saturday said the polls were "reflective of the politcal maturity of all
South Africans.

"In the runup we saw robust competition," she said, adding that
campaigning this this was "issue -driven, no more relying on the roles
that the parties had played" during the liberation era.

The electoral commission said turnout for Wednesday's vote at 76.73
percent was much lower than the previous two democratic elections of 1994
and 1999.

Of the advances made in the provinces, the ANC's biggest gain was in the
Zulu heartland of KwaZulu-Natal, the key prize in the polls, which it had
vowed to wrest this time, but failed to get an outright majority.

The ANC bagged nearly 47 percent of the votes in the eastern province, an
eight percent improvement over its 1999 tally.

Its traditional rival, the Zulu nationalist IFP gained 36.8 percent of the
ballot. But the IFP's main coalition partner in the province, the
Democratic Alliance, notched up 8.3 percent of the vote.

IFP spokesman Musa Zondi on Saturday said his party was open to the idea
of co-governing the volatile province with the ANC, where the runup to the
1994 has seen some 12,000 people being killed in violence between ANC and
IFP supporters.

The main loser nationwide was the New National Party, a reincarnation of
the party which formed the backbone of apartheid South Africa, which got
only 1.65 percent of the vote.

South Africa's 400-seat assembly will convene next week to elect the new
president, who is almost certain to be Mbeki.

The presidential inauguration is scheduled for April 27 as the country
holds festivities marking the 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid
with foreign dignitaries invited to attend.