FREEDOM PARK, South Africa — When it rains in the Freedom Park squatters camp -- which happens often this time of year -- a river runs through Alfred Mokoena's two-room shack of rusty corrugated iron. He taps his leg just above the ankle to show how deep it gets in a real downpour.
Five people share the shack, an oven in summer and an icebox in winter. Mokoena, 34, has no job. His mother, Priscilla, has no job -- in fact, she's in the hospital after nearly dying of pneumonia. His brother, Paulus, 25, has never had a job, and neither has his sister, Mirriam, 18, who has a 9-month-old daughter to support.
But Mokoena hasn't given up on the party that has ruled for the last 10 years of post-apartheid South Africa.
"I'm going to vote for the ANC," he said, referring to his support for the African National Congress in elections today. "I've seen no changes, but maybe if I vote for them again, they'll change."
His comments illustrate the bedrock of support the ANC has among blacks -- even the poorest people, who have fared badly this last decade. Facing a weak opposition, the ruling party is expected to win easily.
South Africa is still a divided country, and racial identification plays a big role in how people vote in a nation that is 75% black.
President Thabo Mbeki, until recently stiff and awkward when meeting ordinary people, has loosened up in the campaign, making a conscious effort to portray himself as a man of the people. Although often criticized for failing to show leadership on the country's AIDS pandemic and for failing to condemn human rights abuses in neighboring Zimbabwe, Mbeki is certain to be elected president by the Parliament after the widely predicted ANC victory.
Analysts predict that the ANC, still closely associated with the immensely popular former President Nelson Mandela, will dominate South African politics for years to come.
"What motivates people to vote in this country is primarily their identity, which is not a distressing fact. Most of our pundits seem to think it's somehow primitive," said Steven Friedman, senior research fellow at the Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg. "It's a reality of our situation, so what that means is the majority of people in this country associate the ANC with freeing them from apartheid."
Opposition parties warn that the entrenchment of one dominant party could undermine South African democracy.
