The electoral popularity of the party concerns some South Africans, not from antipathy towards the ANC but because of the worry that power tends to corrupt, writes Seamus Martin
The widely predicted landslide victory by the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa's general election has been as much a product of the country's fragmented opposition as it was of the ANC's extremely energetic and professional campaign.
It gives the ANC another five years of government, bringing its period in power to 15 consecutive years, a prospect that concerns South Africans of all races and political views, not from antipathy towards the ANC but because of the worry that power tends to corrupt.
A similar electoral success in 2014 would extend the ANC's term in government to 20 years, and as yet there is no sign that any opposition party will be in a position to mount a serious challenge. Yesterday's results merely indicated a reshuffling of the opposition, with some gains by the Democratic Alliance (DA) led by Tony Leon.
The big loser was the New National Party, whose leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, has paid the price for political inconsistency, having once backed the DA and then moved into an informal alliance with the ANC.
This continued dominance of the ANC has caused concern, not only among supporters of the opposition but also from those who would be considered its natural backers.
Fritz Schoon, for example, a 22-year-old law student at the Witwatersrand University, expressed his worries that continued power for the ANC for over 20 years could eventually lead to what he described as a "totalitarian dictatorship".
Both his parents, Marius, who spent many years in exile in Ireland, and Jeanette, were committed ANC members. Jeanette and her five-year-old daughter, Katryn, were murdered in 1985 when the South African security services sent a parcel-bomb to their home in exile in Lubango in Angola.
Fritz Schoon feels that it may be up to his generation to form an opposition at some time in the future and was strongly critical of the culture of loyalty that permeates ANC ranks, insisting: "It is time to see where we are going rather than where we are coming from."
Most black South Africans have been more patient and loyal in their outlook. While openly critical of the government's policy on unemployment and HIV-AIDS, they have regarded the slow progress in these areas as part of a gradual development which will be successful in the long term. They do not see any alternative to the ANC either at present or in the foreseeable future.
Analyst Patrick Laurence of the independent Helen Suzman Foundation also saw some positive developments. The ANC victory, and the near-certainty that it will gain the two-thirds majority needed to allow it change the constitution, was not a threat to democracy per se, he said.
"A lot will depend on how the party uses its mandate. If it does so arrogantly rather than by helping poor people then there could be problems," he said.
He believed that the election was "substantially free and fair" and welcomed what he saw as the emergence of two political blocs "across the colour line".
On the one hand there is an alliance between the ANC and the New National Party, and on the other the mainly white Democratic Alliance has teamed up with the Inkatha Freedom Party.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) under Tony Leon has espoused western conservative economic and social values, including a neo-liberal economic programme, and calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty.
To this extent its alliance with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) has an ideological basis. Its appeal is more attractive to the country's English-speaking white community than it is to the majority black population, which sees the DA essentially as a white people's party.
Running close to 16 per cent of the votes counted so far, however, the DA appears likely to have attracted considerable non-white support.
Buthelezi's party suffers electorally from its extremely close identification with the Zulu nation, of which Chief Buthelezi is a prominent nobleman.
It receives its support, in the main, from traditional Zulus in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal where its alliance with the DA has allowed it to control the local provincial assembly.
More urbanised Zulus in this region are inclined to support the ANC, and in the past the tensions at election time have engendered sporadic bouts of extremely serious violence.
On this occasion, however, with 20,000 members of the security forces drafted into the area, polling took place without any dramatic violence, and analysts were correctly hailing this as a sign of growing maturity in the South African electorate.
IFP also gathers votes in the Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, mainly from Zulu migrant workers in the mining industry. In the first democratic election in 1994 the violence in KwaZulu-Natal was echoed in several townships east of Johannesburg, notably in Thokoza, Katlehong and Vosloorus, but this time the election passed off quietly.
In other South African provinces IFP barely registers on the political radar screen. It had gathered about 5 per cent of the national vote by yesterday evening.
The New National Party under Marthinus van Schalkwyk inherited the mantle of the old National Party, which created the apartheid system but which, under the former president, F.W. de Klerk, brought the evil system to an end.
This grouping has been the big loser in the current elections, getting a little over 2 per cent of the vote.
Its pact with the ANC is based more on political expediency than on ideology, with one of its main objects the gaining of power as a coalition in the Western Cape. A "hung parliament" is the most likely result in this province, which includes Cape Town, the country's second-largest city.
All the main opposition parties, with the exception of the Independent Democrats led by Patricia de Lille, stood to the right of the ANC. Left-wing politicians from the South African Communist Party and the trade union movement are part of the ANC family, and their criticism of ANC policies, though vociferous over the years, were muted during what turned out to be quite a dull election campaign.
This gave Ms de Lille and her colleagues an opportunity to fill the vacant space to the ANC's left and create the hope among some voters that her party might at some stage provide a serious opposition.
This opportunity was not taken. Ms de Lille had some difficulty in overcoming her past links with the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) especially among white voters.
The PAC in the apartheid era was a strong and deadly opponent of the ANC and, while the ANC was calling for "one person one vote" the popular slogan of the PAC was "one-settler one bullet". She has also come across as something of a political lightweight and was claiming a great victory yesterday even though her party was gaining barely more that 2 per cent of the vote.
None of the opposition parties has been able to approach the effectiveness of the ANC's powerful vote-getting machine. President Thabo Mbeki, with the near-certainty that he will win two-thirds of the seats in parliament, now finds himself in a similar position to that held by President Putin in Russia, although both men have indicated to their respective electorates that they are not proposing to alter the basic law.
Under South Africa's constitution the parliament elects the president, and since the ANC has a clear parliamentary majority the man who was number one on its electoral list, President Mbeki, will be re-elected to the highest office in the land.
He will over the coming days select his deputy president and members of the cabinet.
The current deputy president, Jacob Zuma, is, according to observers, likely to keep his job at least for the time being due to his popularity with the ANC rank-and-file, but he has been the subject of corruption allegations and may come under pressure later this year.
Another cabinet member to come under severe pressure is the Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who has been ridiculed by opposition parties, and less stridently by ANC members, because of her advice to HIV-AIDS sufferers to eat beetroot as part of a possible cure.
Her removal from the health portfolio would be taken as an indication that a change in the government's eccentric policy on the pandemic is truly under way.
While the ANC's majority has been overwhelming it should be remembered that 25 per cent of those entitled to vote failed to register, and this figure reached 34 per cent in the 18-to-24 age group.
Turnout is likely to have reached about 78 per cent compared to the 90 per cent forecast by some politicians. Significant numbers of voters, therefore, would seem to have opted out of the process in a country where the struggle for the vote dominated the political scene for decades.
Seamus Martin, a former Irish Times South Africa correspondent, will be reporting in Weekend tomorrow on the transformation the country has undergone since he reported on the fall of apartheid there 10 years ago.