Word: ances
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...Will the ANC win easily? Yes, or at least by a comfortable margin. Most opinion polls put its support between 60% and 70% of the popular vote. (It won 66% in 2004.) The lowest prediction gives the party 47% support. But even that figure would still make it by far South Africa's largest party. Its nearest rivals - the Democratic Alliance and the Congress of the People, which split from the ANC late last year - rarely score more than 15% each in any survey...
Does that mean Jacob Zuma will be President? Almost certainly. He is the President of the ANC, and the national President is elected by Parliament, whose members, under a proportional-representation system, are allocated seats according to their party's share of Wednesday's vote...
...result is almost assured, why so much interest? Three reasons. First, South Africa is Africa's economic and political heavyweight. What happens in South Africa affects all Africa and is often seen as a weather vane for the continent. In particular, the ANC is the most prominent of Africa's liberation movements - the revolutionary parties that overthrew white or colonial rule. Its success or failure in adapting from the demands of fighting a revolutionary war to the demands of competing in a free and fair democracy - requiring less a transition than a total reinvention - has wide implications for Africa, even...
Zuma, who portrays himself as an outsider, capitalized on that discontent to depose the previous leadership of the ANC and former President Thabo Mbeki. But not everyone is convinced. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for one, says he will not vote ANC this time around, saying it has betrayed the hope of the Mandela years...
Finally, the ANC's support has steadily declined since the heady days of the early 1990s. This election is billed as the most open since the end of apartheid - and perhaps the first in which the party's victory is not guaranteed - and that competition has naturally raised interest...