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Mbeki is surrounded by balloons after the final tally was announced RELATED VIDEO CNN's Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports of the final results of South Africa's elections Windows Media 28K 80K  ALSO: Nelson Mandela bids farewell  MESSAGE BOARD: South Africa elections

June 7, 1999
Web posted at: 10:40 p.m. EDT (0240 GMT)

In this story: Democratic Party leads opposition 'The center has held' RELATED STORIES, SITES

PRETORIA, South Africa (CNN) -- Though it won an overwhelming victory in last week's elections, South Africa's ruling African National Congress fell one seat short of a two-thirds majority in parliament, according to final election results released Monday.

The ANC had been campaigning to reach the two-thirds mark, a percentage that would have given it the power to unilaterally change the country's constitution.

The Independent Electoral Commission said the ANC took 66.5 percent of the vote, earning 266 of the 400 seats in the country's National Assembly. The ANC-dominated body is expected to elect Deputy President Thabo Mbeki as president on Monday, replacing retiring President Nelson Mandela.

The June 2 vote was only the second all-race election since the fall of apartheid.

"Each of us played a role in strengthening our multi-party democracy," said IEC Chairwoman Brigalia Bam. "We turned the wheel of history forward."

Democratic Party leads opposition

Taking its place as opposition leader in the National Assembly with 38 seats is the mostly white Democratic Party. The Inkatha Freedom Party, whose leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi is mentioned as a possible deputy president in Mbeki's cabinet, took third place with 34 seats.

The New National Party -- successor to the party that ruled during apartheid -- lost its role as second-largest party and dropped to fourth place, with 28 seats. NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk warned that the ANC's heavy mandate may not be healthy for South African democracy.

"For all opposition parties, this is not good news. The ANC has increased its majority, and the opposition has succeeded only in shifting votes from one to another," Schalkwyk said.

The ANC denied suggestions by opposition parties it wanted to change the constitution to consolidate its power.

"Some parties had great ambitions to have two-thirds and so on, and the people have taken the decision," Mbeki said in a speech after the results were announced.

'The center has held'

Quoting the poet W.B. Yeats, 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."

Polls show that 96 percent of South African voters agree with their next president. Pollsters said such approval signals a high degree of national consensus across racial and party divisions. But some analysts believe that the racial divide in parliament may grow with the predominantly white Democratic Party as the official opposition.

"The Democratic Party is attracting a lot of white folks, the ANC is going to be attracting a huge number of black folks, so the racial divide is going to find manifestation in parliament," said Khehla Shubane of the Institute of Policy Studies.

Democratic Party chairman Douglas Gibson disagreed.

"I think there's going to be less. Unfortunately, racial politics are still rife in South Africa. The ANC has too few whites and the Democratic Party has too few blacks," he said.

Johannesburg Bureau Chief Charlayne Hunter-Gault, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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