The party linked to decades of white racist rule in South Africa formally departed the political stage today, with its leader apologising for ”a system grounded in injustice.”

Despite lingering poverty, high unemployment and an AIDS crisis, gratitude to the party that toppled apartheid a decade ago appeared to guarantee the African National Congress a landslide South African general election victory today.

South Africans vote in national elections for the third time today a mere decade after the country’s first vote to include all racial groups ended white minority rule.

Former president FW De Klerk, who negotiated the end of the oppressive white-minority regime his party created, has warned that South African democracy is being undercut by the same racial divides as a decade ago.

South Africa’s third all-race election will be held on April 14, President Thabo Mbeki announced in Parliament today.