SOUTH AFRICANS QUE UP FOR POLLS AFTER MANDELA ERA

Millions of South Africans today braved the threats of disruption and sporadic violence to exercise their franchise in an election widely expected to return the ruling ANC to power, 20 years after anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela first took power in 1994. About 25 million registered voters - roughly half the population - began trickling into some 22,263 polling centres across the country from before dawn to exercise their right to vote in the fifth all-race elections. Under the proportional representation system, South Africans are voting for parties, not candidates, in two simultaneous ballots for national and provincial governments. Police said at least one officer will be on duty at every polling station and troops have also been deployed to keep order at various hotspots. There was rioting in Bekkersdal township, south-west of Johannesburg, last evening and reports said some temporary polling stations had been burned down. In some other areas, protesters threatened to disrupt polling over lack of service delivery. The polls, the first in which the so-called 'Born Frees' – people born after 1994 in a democratic South Africa – will cast their votes, are widely expected to return the African National Congress (ANC) to power that has ruled since 1994. Except Western Cape Province where the main opposition party Democratic Alliance is in power, the ANC governs the other eight provinces. The ANC is expected to win more than 60 per cent of the vote, even as its campaign has been hit by concern over economic problems such as high unemployment and a number of corruption scandals, analysts said. In his hometown of rural Nkandla, President Jacob Zuma, who is expected to be returned to a second five-year term, arrived at a polling station to cast his vote amid loud ululating from women standing in the queue. After casting his vote, 72-year-old Zuma urged all citizens to come out and cast their votes without directly calling on them to vote for his party. "This is our right that we fought for. Among the rights that we have, this is the most important right – to vote for your government," Zuma said. But his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, expected to succeed Zuma in the next elections in five years' time, was more forthright as he cast his vote in Soweto, calling on voters to make their marks for the ANC. These are the first elections since the death in December of Mandela, the country's first black president.
In the upmarket Cape Town suburb of Rondebosch, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille caused a small stir when she dropped both her national and provincial ballot paper into the same box, but Independent Electoral Commission officials said it was not a problem as they were marked separately and would be correctly allocated during the counting process. "Every election is important but this one is specifically important because it will create a platform for being able to change a government peacefully through the ballot box and that is the big test for every democracy," Zille said as she refused to comment to reporters on polls indicating that her party would increase its seats in Parliament. In Seshego in Limpopo province, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema cast his vote after earlier altercations between his members and ANC members who were distributing t-shirts bearing Zuma's face. Malema was the leader of the ANC Youth League until he fell out of favour with the party for his outspoken views and formed his own party. Pieter Mulder, leader of the Freedom Front Plus, representing largely the white minority, said after casting his vote in Potchefstroom: "In our electoral system there will always be room for small parties because they play a specific role carrying the interests of specific people in Parliament as part of a mature democracy." Although first results from some centres are expected to be out before midnight tonight, final results are not expected before Saturday.