Madam, - Your edition of February 25th has only now come to hand in Cape Town. I read with dismay and some consternation Bill Corcoran's "analysis" of what he considered was the weakening grip of the African National Congress in its "heartlands" during the recent local government elections.
In the event, the results showed a continuing increase in the number of ANC councillors elected in every province except for the Western Cape, where its percentage of votes remained the same as in 2000. Every large town in South Africa, except for Cape Town, will have an ANC majority.
Mr Corcoran should go to the grassroots to find out about what is happening in this huge country, rather than relying on second-hand accounts and a single interview with an academic. Your readers are not well served by statements such as that poor people have been "left behind by leaders they supported and bled for during the apartheid era" and that these grievances have "surfaced over the past years".
What nonsense. The "meltdown" he identified and which his fellow journalists in South Africa were looking for has not occurred this time, and not in the general election of 2004 when the ANC won 70 per cent of the votes! To paraphrase Mark Twain, the imminent meltdown of the ANC has been greatly exaggerated. - Yours, etc,
Prof KADER ASMAL,
National Assembly,
Cape Town,
South Africa.