April 15, 2004 - 8:45 AM

ANC eyes big poll victory

By Wambui Chege

PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress is powering toward another big victory and analysts say it could grab
at least two-thirds of the vote in the country's third post-apartheid elections.

With one-fourth of polling stations declared on Thursday, the party which led South Africa from white rule to democracy in 1994 was ahead
with 65.81 percent, closing in on the 66.35 percent it scored in the last election in 1999.

But the ANC was battling for two key provinces and faced a rising challenge from the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which ran a
campaign highlighting South Africa's huge problems with AIDS, crime and unemployment.

"We are excited about the results so far," ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said. "The hurricane is beginning to blow. It's blowing in our
favour."

Wednesday's vote appeared to have gone smoothly despite scattered accusations of intimidation and fraud in traditional hotspots.

Political analysts said early results indicated the ANC was probably on track for a two-thirds majority in parliament, which would allow it to
amend the constitution at will.

"Our prediction is the ANC should be at around 69 percent," said Hans Ittmann of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research, a
research group analysing the results.

Early results showed the DA, a largely white party which has campaigned as the official opposition, winning about 17.7 percent of the vote,
a jump from 9.6 percent in 1999 which party officials attributed to defections from the New National Party (NNP), the heir to the party which
built apartheid.

"It is still too early to call, because it is not a representative sample, but it's clear we've smashed the NNP... We are delighted with the results
to date," Douglas Gibson, DA chief whip, said at the Independent Electoral Commission headquarters in Pretoria.

Tensions were high in KwaZulu-Natal, where President Thabo Mbeki's ANC hopes to wrest control of the provincial government from the
Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

Hundreds of troops were sent to hotspots and officials said some of the 20,000 police deployed in the province would help escort ballot
boxes to the regional electoral office.

Police said they arrested 43 armed former soldiers late on Tuesday in the province's main city Durban as they apparently met to discuss
plans to disrupt voting. They were charged with holding an illegal meeting and planning to disturb the peace.

PROVINCIAL BATTLES

Voters elected regional assemblies as well as the national parliament, and the ANC has set its heart on capturing both KwaZulu-Natal and
the Western Cape -- the only two of the nine provinces it does not already control though a simple majority.

In both cases, early results hinted that alliance governments would take office.

Counting was slow in KwaZulu-Natal, with many rural areas of traditional IFP support still to report. But with almost 15 percent of the polling
stations counted, results showed the ANC ahead with 43 percent of votes against 36.7 percent for the IFP. The DA, the IFP's alliance partner,
was at 11.67 percent in the province.

In Western Cape, with almost 40 percent of polling stations counted, the ANC's 42.33 percent edged the DA into second place at 30.80
percent. The NNP, current allies of the ANC in the province's government, stood at 9.38 percent, heavily down from its almost 35 percent
showing in 1999.