South African Issues:Voters Have A Lot To Contend With In The Upcoming Election!

There are a host of issues that will be weighing heavily on South African voter's minds when they cast their votes this month.There is a really humongous disparity of wealth in South Africa.The phrase "privileged few" should be taken literally when referring to wealthy South Africans.

In addition to economic woes,the crime rate has caused scores of South Africans to migrate to a safer place.Since a lot of people are unhappy with the African National Congress(ANC),it will be interesting to see whether or not the opposition can sway the voters.Many say that it is highly unlikely that they will.Here's more from the Telegraph:

"The Democratic Alliance (DA) might be South Africa's largest opposition party, but it has little chance of consummating an affair with the country's voters. Thanks to the dominance of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the immense popularity of the ANC's wayward leader, Jacob Zuma, no-one believes that the DA is bidding for the presidency in Wednesday's general election.

Yet the party's mission is still vital. Helen Zille, the head of the DA and the national opposition leader, speaks with passion about the need to preserve South Africa's democracy by driving a few nails into the ANC's hegemony.Mrs Zille hounds the government at every turn - and she targets Mr Zuma in particular. Until the prosecution was dropped earlier this month, the ANC leader faced 16 criminal charges, ranging from corruption to fraud, racketeering and tax evasion.

The case against Mr Zuma, who has always protested his innocence, was abandoned on procedural grounds, leaving a thick cloud of uncertainty over his head. Mrs Zille never ceases to remind voters of her rival's legal travails and the DA's campaign slogan is simple, if resoundingly negative: "Stop Zuma!"

All this has a serious purpose: Mrs Zille is trying to make the ANC accountable and ensure that Mr Zuma will pay a high political price if he tries to undermine the country's democratic institutions after winning power. In every campaign speech, she says that South Africa needs "politicians who are terrified of the people, instead of the other way round".

After 15 years in power, few doubt that the ANC is succumbing to the temptations faced by all dominant parties. It has already defeated South Africa's police and courts, neither of whom were strong enough to bring Mr Zuma to trial and resolve the corruption allegations one way or the other.

The distinction between the party and state becomes ever more blurred, with the ANC quietly taking control of supposedly independent institutions, notably the national prosecuting authority, and turning them into tools for political struggle.

Mrs Zille argues that Wednesday's election is a chance to strike a blow for South African democracy - and the stakes could not be higher.

"People everywhere need to be concerned about the outcome of the South African election because we're on the tip of a continent where democracy has not had a good track record and where this ghastly phenomenon of the failed state has become somewhat endemic," she told The Sunday Telegraph at the end of a day's campaigning last week.

"Anyone who believes that you can't simply cut Africa out of the world map has a great interest in us succeeding, because if South Africa were to have a failed democracy, then it would be disastrous for the entire continent."

Mr Zuma had shown himself "unfit for office", she said, because he "doesn't understand constitutionalism and the rule of law."

Mrs Zille has set her party a crucial objective: to deny the ANC the two-thirds majority in the National Assembly which would allow Mr Zuma to rewrite the constitution. If the opposition can hold the ANC below this crucial threshold, Mr Zuma will be unable to achieve his stated ambition of clipping the wings of the Constitutional Court.

Mrs Zille has some chance of achieving this - but the odds are still against her. The ANC has won a two thirds majority in two of South Africa's three previous elections since apartheid's downfall. In the last poll in 2004, the ANC swept almost 70 per cent of the vote, while the DA managed only 12 per cent.

Three vital factors could make this contest different. Mr Zuma commands a huge personal following, which could boost the ANC vote still higher.

But the party has suffered its first split, with leading supporters of Thabo Mbeki, the deposed president, leaving to form their own party, the Congress for the People. They will take some of the ANC's voters with them.(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.