South Africans vote in ruling ANC’s toughest local polls yet
South Africans started voting yesterday in municipal elections, with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) facing discontent over poor services and stark inequality 27 years after ending white minority rule.
The ANC's rise to power in 1994 drew a line under centuries of racist oppression of the country's majority Blacks by the descendents of white settlers. But critics say the liberators have proved less effective at more mundane tasks like fixing drains, supplying clean water and keeping the lights on.
Failures to maintain roads, sewerage treatment plants and creaking coal-fired power stations could cost the legacy party of late liberation hero Nelson Mandela. Analysts expect its vote share to fall below 50% for the first time, from 54% in the last local polls, itself the ANC's worst outcome yet.
Polls opened at 0500 GMT and are scheduled to close at 1900 GMT.
"I'm here to vote for change," said 67-year old pensioner Xinyenyani Mthembu at a polling station in Soweto township.
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