ANC wins South Africa election
Sunday, 11 May 2014
JOHANNESBURG, May 10 (agencies): South Africa's ruling African National Congress won the 2014 national election with 62.16 percent of the votes, the electoral commission said on Friday.
The provisional result shows the ANC's main rival, the Democratic Alliance (DA), took 22.22 percent, while the ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) managed 6.35 percent.
Meanwhile: South African police said Saturday they arrested around 60 rioters after violent protests in a Johannesburg township amid allegations of voter fraud in elections that returned Nelson Mandela's ANC to power.
Rivalry reminiscent of the twilight of apartheid had flared up between the African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) shortly after the polls on Wednesday.
The IFP has made claims of vote-rigging in Johannesburg's Alexandra township, where angry residents on Friday burned tyres and barricaded roads, and the army was deployed to help quell the unrest, police said.
"Since yesterday (Friday) 59 people have been arrested for public violence," police spokesman Neville Malila told AFP.
Police used stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of up to 400 people, said Malila.
"Last night there was army deployment," he said, adding that police remained in the restive former blacks-only area.
No casualties were reported.
The military appeared to have left the township by Saturday, according to an AFP photographer, while armoured police vehicles patrolled streets littered with debris and charred remains of election posters.
ANC provincial spokesman Nkenke Kekana blamed the Inkatha Freedom Party for the protests after it lost key constituencies in Alexandra during the vote.
"For the first time since 1994 the ANC managed to win those voting districts from the IFP. That is the source of the violence," he told AFP.
He also accused the IFP of preventing election officials as well as ANC representatives from leaving a government building in the area on Thursday.