south africa votes
i've meant to write about today's most important elections in south africa, and mostly out of concern for the violence leading to this date, but other matters have occupied my time and now i am left with echoing a washington post editorial on the subject. in any case, this is of utmost importance, given what's really at stake.«south africans vote today in the country's third post-apartheid election. there is no doubt as to the victor: the african national congress, led by president thabo mbeki, retains the popularity that it built up as the standard-bearer of the anti-apartheid movement. the only questions are whether the anc will win more than two-thirds of the vote, giving it the power to change the constitution without consulting other parties, and whether the party will sweep to power in all nine provincial legislatures. it will be better if the anc falls short of that clean sweep: from mexico's institutional revolutionary party to the liberal democratic party in japan, single-party democracies have a way of falling into corruption. yet the anc's record is, with one glaring exception, good enough to justify its continued popularity...»
