ANC 1 Vote Shy of Two-Thirds in S. Africa Parliament

The African National Congress won solid control of South Africa’s Parliament, but final election results Monday showed that it failed to win the power to change the constitution.

The ANC came up just one vote short of the two-thirds margin needed to unilaterally amend the constitution. The ANC had denied suggestions by opposition parties that it wanted to do so to amass greater power.

The ANC, which has governed since winning the nation’s first all-race election in 1994, took 266 seats in the 400-member National Assembly--a 14-seat gain.

Brigalia Bam, head of the Independent Electoral Commission, read the certified results Monday to the heads of political parties and other officials, including the president-to-be, Thabo Mbeki.

Mbeki said the world feared that the “center cannot hold” in South Africa. “But the center has held, the center has held in favor of democracy. It has held in favor of the people of South Africa freely stating what they think,” he said.

Taking its place as opposition leader in the National Assembly, with 38 seats, will be the mostly white Democratic Party.

Inkatha Freedom Party, whose leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, is a possible deputy president in Mbeki’s Cabinet, took 34 seats.

The New National Party--the successor to the party that ruled during apartheid--lost its role as second-largest party and dropped to fourth place, with 28 seats.

Only 20 seats went to special-interest and extreme right- or left-wing parties.