“My country needs a change, people’s lives are not good,” he tells. “We will vote for a party which will make a change to our lives.” In South Africa today, this is a common and peculiar paradox where people – like this truck driver – are disillusioned, but still plan to re-elect the Mbeki Government in a likely landslide victory in Wednesday’s historic poll marking 10 years of democracy in South Africa. Despite the growing problems affecting South Africa – in particular the crippling 40 per cent unemployment rate, the surge in violent crime and the AIDS crisis, which kills 600 people a day – Mbeki is expected to win re-election in a canter this week. Election facts * Voting is for 400 members of parliament, who will elect a new president – almost certain to be the African National Congress’s Thabo Mbeki, for a second five-year term * ANC controls all provinces except KwaZulu-Natal but tensions are high after thousands of deaths there during election violence in the 1990s * Main Democratic Alliance opposition is allied to Inkatha Freedom Party, which has the bulk of Zulu support
