Sluggish vote-counting has forced South Africa's new, racially integrated parliament to postpone its first meeting and lengthen Nelson Mandela's long road to power.
Election officials stopped answering questions, stopped answering phones and stopped issuing partial results from individual counting stations in an attempt to speed up ballot-counting that has taken four days - as long as the voting last week in the first all-race election.The parliament has put off its first meeting until Monday, instead of Friday, and its first task will be to elect Mandela as South Africa's first black president.
Mandela is to be inaugurated Tuesday in Pretoria. Officials say that date can't be changed because so many dignitaries are due in from around the world.
The guests could include the presidents of Israel and China, Yasser Arafat, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Britain's Prince Philip.
As of Wednesday morning, with almost half the results still outstanding, Mandela's African Nationalist Congress had 62.5 percent of the votes with about 47 percent still out, enough to ensure the former political prisoner will be chosen president when parliament meets.
F.W. de Klerk's National Party had 22.1 percent; Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party 8.3 percent; the Freedom Front, which demands a separate white homeland, 2.7 percent.
Other small parties with enough votes for a few Parliament seats were the white, liberal Democratic Party, the black nationalist Pan-Africanist Congress and the new African Christian Democratic Party.
"Counting has been going on right through the night," said a member of the commission running the election, Pieter Cronje.
In the counting for the nine provincial legislatures, the ANC was winning handily in seven. The National Party had a solid lead in the Western Cape, and Inkatha was well ahead in KwaZulu-Natal. The legislatures are to meet Saturday to chose the Senate.
"The only date that seems cast in stone is the inauguration on Tuesday because of the invited guests," said Dries van Heerden, spokesman for the multiracial council overseeing the transition from white minority rule.
The crawling vote count follows allegations from all sides of election irregularities including intimidation, disappearing ballots, under-age voting.