Final election results in South Africa showed today that the ruling African National Congress was returned to power with even more votes than it won in 1994. But it fell just one seat short of a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Five days after the country held its second post-apartheid elections, its Independent Election Commission announced that it had finished counting and verifying the nearly 16 million votes cast last Wednesday.
According to commission figures, the party won 266 of Parliament's 400 seats. The liberal Democratic Party had the next-highest total, with 38 seats, followed by the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party, with 34 seats, and the Afrikaner-led New National Party, with 28 seats. The newly formed United Democratic Movement, headed by Bantu Holomisa, a former A.N.C. official who was ejected from the party for insubordination, got 14 seats. All told, 13 parties are to have seats in South Africa's next Parliament, about twice as many as in 1994, though they will have 14 fewer seats between them.
At the ceremony announcing the final count, South Africa's next President, Thabo Mbeki, pledged that democracy was ''here to stay'' in South Africa. Mr. Mbeki, 56, currently Deputy President, who was the A.N.C.'s only candidate for President, borrowed from Yeats, saying: ''There were many in our country and elsewhere who thought that things would fall apart, that the center could not hold.'' But Mr. Mbeki, who is expected to take office on June 16, added that it did hold. ''It has held in favor of democracy and of the people of South Africa,'' he said.
African National Congress officials started off the campaign season saying they wanted a two-thirds majority so they could consider changing some aspects of the Constitution. But when opposition parties focused their campaigns on warning the electorate of the A.N.C.'s plans, the party's officials began downplaying the goal. In recent weeks, Mr. Mbeki has dismissed its importance, saying he had no plans to change the Constitution. Some political analysts said that the failure to win two-thirds of the Parliament's seats might be a blessing in disguise for the party. ''They are saved from the internal struggles that might have cropped up if they had the two-thirds majority,'' said Shaun Mackay, a researcher with the nonprofit Center for Policy Studies.
The A.N.C.'s victory was overwhelming, not only in the national election, but in the nine provincial elections as well. It failed to win a clear majority in only two provinces, the Western Cape, which includes Cape Town, and KwaZulu/Natal, which includes Durban and is the heartland of the Inkatha Freedom Party. Negotiations over coalitions between various parties have already begun. Several newspapers have reported that the A.N.C. is offering Inkatha's leader, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the job of Deputy President in exchange for control over who will be the premier of the KwaZulu/Natal province.
Mr. Mbeki seemed to give his strongest public signal yet that he would appoint Mr. Buthelezi in his Cabinet to be announced next week. He called Mr. Buthelezi up to the stage from where he was sitting with his Inkatha colleagues, saying jokingly, ''I want to take him out of the I.F.P. and put him in government.'' According to the South African Press Association, Mr. Buthelezi tonight denied that he had been offered the deputy position. On whether he would accept the post if it was offered, he replied: ''That is like saying if you were offered a box of chocolates, would you eat them?''
The African National Congress and Inkatha have been rivals for more than a decade. Before the 1994 elections more than 10,000 people died in fighting between the two sides. But in recent years, the two parties have been trying to work together and Mr. Buthelezi has filled in as President whenever President Nelson Mandela and Mr. Mbeki were out of the country at the same time. Although some areas of Kwazulu/ Natal were tense during the election campaign, violence was minimal.
Source: New Ypork Times
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