South Africans Vote, Expecting Few Big Changes

DIEPSLOOT, South Africa — On Wednesday, voters began lining up shortly after midnight in this sprawling settlement north of Johannesburg. By 4:30 a.m., there were lines a thousand people long at some polling stations. Thomas Baloyi, 49, arrived at 5:45 a.m. and only cast his ballot five hours later. He said he voted for the African National Congress, the party that led the liberation from apartheid and has governed the country during the 15 years it has been a democracy. “I am an A.N.C. man until the day I die,” said Mr. Baloyi, an unemployed laborer. “I don’t care who the candidate is, as long as he is A.N.C.” Disappointment runs deep among South Africans. In one recent poll, fewer than half of them thought they were better off now than they were under apartheid, according to the research group Afrobarometer . Yet if the polls are correct, the A.N.C. is about to win the nation’s fourth democratic election in yet another landslide, and its leader, the self-educated populist Jacob Zuma, will become president. The question is whether the party can equal the 70 percent share it tallied in 2004 or will get something closer to the 63 percent it won under Nelson Mandela in 1994. Results will start trickling in late Wednesday and the bulk of the ballots will be counted on Thursday and Friday. The A.N.C.’s seemingly certain victory underscores the way South Africa, after being unshackled from apartheid, has been a virtual one-party state, so much so that many here worry about the political future of the nation regarded as the democratic anchor of the continent. In Diepsloot, however, democracy seemed to be on prideful display. Standing in the morning chill, voters could have been giving a lecture on citizenship in a civics class. One after another, they spoke about making a difference and having their voice heard. “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain,” said Lubabalo Nobadula, a 20-year-old student casting a ballot for the first time. “I voted A.N.C. because I owe the party. They liberated the country and I am repaying the debt.”The nation’s democracy is young enough that many voters spoke of casting their ballot as a way of honoring those who sacrificed in the struggle for freedom. CONTINUE READING...