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South Africa goes to the polls Wednesday in an election billed as the most important since Nelson Mandela led his nation to overthrow apartheid 15 years ago. How so, when the result - a landslide for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the election of its leader Jacob Zuma to the presidency - is barely in doubt? Here's TIME's quick question-and-answer guide to South Africa's general election: (Read "Why South Africa's Over The Rainbow...
...violence is an increasing international concern as the 2010 soccer World Cup draws near. But first there is the election, and as that approaches, many South Africans are weighing a suspicion that the ANC hasn't delivered on all its past promises because the party hasn't been made to. Granting the ANC a hefty majority - it won 66% of the vote in the last general election - obviated its need to perform: instead of focusing outwards on improving the living standards of the country, it focused inwards on improving its own. That hasn't gone unnoticed, and notwithstanding Zuma...
Disaffection - and the ability to express it at the ballot box - is a cornerstone of democracy. If the ANC is in for an upset on polling day, even simply a reduced majority, it will be receiving a lesson learned by revolutionary groups before it. Fatah's loss to Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian elections was a boost for militancy, sure, but also a testament to Hamas's superior social-service delivery. Mugabe's efforts to hold onto power, trying to alter the constitution to allow him everlasting rule, was the spur for the formation of the opposition Movement for Democratic...
...jolt at the ballot box might prove a much needed reminder to the ANC that it is there to serve the people, and not the other way around. In addition, a weakening of the ANC and a strengthening of the opposition would help redress the one-party domination that has hitherto undermined Africa's proudest democracy. Lekota says that this election may be the "maturing" of South Africa's democracy...
South Africa can take comfort from the knowledge that even its greatest leader had trouble making the transition from revolutionary to democrat. In office, Mandela expressed admiration for autocrats like Fidel Castro and Muammar Gaddafi, and in his farewell speech to the ANC party conference in 1997 claimed South Africa's violent crime was part of a "counter-revolution" engineered by pro-apartheid whites "to render the country ungovernable." But in retirement, Mandela rediscovered his inner democrat, speaking out against tyranny, wherever he found it - even in his own party. In March 2007, at the funeral of Adelaide Tambo, wife...