Early poll for strife-torn South Africa

Published on Tuesday 18 November 2008 21:22

SOUTH Africa's ruling African National Congress yesterday called an early general election in an apparent panic attempt to wrong-foot a rising tide of opposition, especially from the new political party which broke away from the ANC two months ago.

South Africans will go to the polls on 25 March, two to three months earlier than anticipated, in what is expected to be the most closely contested election in the country's entire history – either in the apartheid or post-apartheid eras.

Political commentators are already predicting a violent election campaign following an attack last week by an ANC Youth League mob on a meeting of the breakaway Congress of the People (Cope) in Durban. The meeting was abandoned after scores of Youth League supporters stormed the hall, threw chairs at Cope supporters and tore down posters.

The poll-date decision was reached by the ANC's 28-member national working committee, the party's top executive body. It also decided that the new state president will be inaugurated on Freedom Day, 27 April. It was on 27 April 1994 that Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

The new state president is likely to be the controversial party leader Jacob Zuma, who has charges of corruption, fraud, racketeering and tax evasion hanging over him in connection with the country's contentious 5 billion arms deal with British Aerospace and other European weapons manufacturers.

The ANC leadership has argued that a "political" solution should be found to Mr Zuma's potential criminal-trial problems. This was one of the key issues that led to the ANC split, with many top ANC ministers, MPs, provincial governors and entire party branches defecting to the Congress of the People.

A former ANC chairman, Mosiuoa Lekota, who resigned as defence minister in September, was one of the leaders of the breakaway.

In the first heavy shot of the election campaign, the ANC has claimed that the name Congress of the People is its legal property.

It has called on the fledgling party's lawyers to hand over to the ANC for destruction all the materials and symbols that carry the name.

A columnist for the Johannesburg Star newspaper, Onkgopotse Tabane, wrote yesterday: "The ANC has reason to fear (Cope and other opposition parties] because it can no longer claim a monopoly of struggle credentials."