SOUTH AFRICA: A decade after banishing apartheid, President Thabo Mbeki's African National Congress (ANC) party is poised for a sweeping victory in today's South African election.
Some pollsters give the ANC up to 70 per cent of the vote, highlighting how the fractured opposition has failed to dent the party's broad support base.
Most South Africans, 79 per cent of whom are black, remain indebted to the ANC for liberating them from racist white rule. But if apartheid was the enemy a decade ago, today apathy is a bigger problem.
In 1994 almost 20 million people cast their vote, some queuing for hours in lines a mile long.
But turnout fell to 16 million in 1999, and analysts say it could be lower still this time.
Millions of voters from the new generation, many too young to remember the brutal repression of apartheid, have failed to register for the vote. Some feel there is little point in voting when the victor has already been effectively declared.
Other voters are disillusioned by the ANC's failure to tackle the country's colossal social problems, such as the yawning chasm between rich and poor and the 40 per cent unemployment rate.
Beatrice Bususiwe, sells foam cushions on a street corner in Johannesburg's rundown city centre. A decade ago she voted enthusiastically for the ANC, but this time she is going to abstain in protest.
"I'm not going to waste my time voting," she said.
"We live in rubbish houses and can't find good jobs, but there haven't been any politicians \ around here," the mother of five added irritably, cutting up a piece of foam. "They just drive past in their big cars."
Crime is another burning issue. Violent robbery has soared in urban and rural areas, and South Africa has one of the world's highest murder rates.
Much of Johannesburg city centre, once bustling with commerce and nightlife, has become ghettoised since big business fled to the enclaved suburbs .
Isaac Ndhlovu, an immigrant trader from Malawi, said he found a pool of blood on the pavement as he set up his stall near Commissioner Street early that morning. "Must have been another shooting last night," he said.
But the ANC has also notched up an impressive list of achievements - new houses for 1.6 million township dwellers, clean water for nine million and electricity delivery to 70 per cent of homes.
Most of all, it has steered South Africa from the brink of a possible civil war in 1994 to building the continent's strongest democracy and dominant economy.
President Mbeki has asked voters to be patient "They can see that there is progress," he told the BBC yesterday.
"[They say], 'Sure, I might still be living in a shack like this personally, but it's clear that things have changed quite radically, it's coming to me'."
Some 37 parties are contesting the poll, ranging from the New National Party - the re-branded party of one-time apartheid rulers - to the Pan Africanist Congress, which once ran under the slogan "One settler, one bullet." The ANC's main opposition is the Democratic Alliance, which won 10 per cent of the vote in 1999 but has struggled to shake its image as a white-dominated party.
Otherwise, just two of the country's nine provinces present a challenge to the ANC's dominance - KwaZulu-Natal, where the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party holds sway, and Western Cape, where it is vying with the NNP and a number of feisty independents.
The first results are expected three hours after polls close at 9 p.m. local time (8 p.m. Irish time) this evening, with the final result being announced within three days. The incoming president will be inaugurated on April 27th, a decade to the day after the historic 1994 poll.