Voters went to the polls in South Africa yesterday in local government elections. The elections are widely seen as a trial of strength between the ruling African National Congress and the newly-formed Democratic Alliance. First results are expected today.
The stakes are high for President Thabo Mbeki. A decline in ANC fortunes (it won just under two-thirds of the vote in last year's general election) will almost certainly be interpreted as a confirmation that Mr Mbeki has harmed himself and his party by his apparent sympathy for dissident theories on AIDS and by his aloof intellectualism.
But the election was no less important to the reputation of Mr Tony Leon: an advocate of "muscular liberalism", he forged the Democratic Alliance (DA) out of the old Democratic and New National Parties and campaigned vigorously to establish a bridgehead in the black community from which to launch new campaigns in future elections.
Electioneering was characterised by sharp exchanges between the ANC (which zealously defends its close ties with the majority black community) and the DA (which is seeking to break the ANC's virtual monopoly over the black vote in eight of the nine provinces).
Thus, on the eve of the election, Mr Mbeki told black voters: "There are other people who will tell you that they love you. But where were they when we were fighting apartheid? They were on the side that locked us away in Robben Island."
Not to be outdone, Mr Leon responded by accusing the ANC of failing to fulfil its promise of a "better life for all" and predicting that its promise of "free basic services" for the poor would similarly prove to be a chimera. He described Mr Mbeki as a president "with the attitude of a king".
The election stakes were raised further by the creation of six unicities or megacities, whose mayors - some of whom will be New York-style executive mayors - will control bigger budgets than the provincial premiers. Campaigning was particularly intense in Cape Town, where the DA had the best chance of ending up in control of a major city.
Nevertheless, this campaign failed to replicate the excitement and voter enthusiasm generated by the 1994 and 1999 general elections and, to a lesser extent, the local government elections of 1995-96. Slow polling yesterday appeared to confirm predictions of a low poll. There were widespread forecasts of a poll of about 50 per cent (compared to the 89 per cent in the 1999 general election).
Most political observers reckoned that abstention would favour the DA.
Meanwhile, five people were killed in what appeared to be election-related fighting in Phola Park, east of Johannesburg. Phola Park was the scene of many blood battles in the intra-black conflict during in the troubled early 1990s.