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...