African National Congress presidential candidate Jacob Zuma dances with a local artist during celebrations outside the party headquarters in Johannesburg on Thursday. (Themba Hadebe/Associated Press)South Africa's African National Congress has easily won a parliamentary majority, according to voting results released Saturday, setting the stage for the controversial Jacob Zuma to ascend to the presidency.

However, with 66.02 per cent of the vote, the ANC fell short of its goal of winning at least 66.6 per cent.

The ANC needs to keep its two-thirds majority to enact major budgetary plans or legislation unchallenged, or to change the constitution.

The final number of seats in parliament is based on a complicated formula and has yet to be determined.

The two major opposition parties — the Democratic Alliance and Congress of the People party —trailed the ANC by a wide margin.

Zuma's supporters have been celebrating since shortly after the voting ended Wednesday as his party's victory wasn't seriously in doubt.

The ANC views Zuma as the first leader who can energize voters since the legendary Nelson Mandela. But others say Zuma is too beholden to unions and leftists, and will not be able to fulfil his promises of creating jobs and a stronger social safety net.

At the end of the campaign, Zuma was talking not about creating jobs, but staving off job losses.

Populist agenda

His warmth and rise from poverty to political prominence have drawn adoring crowds throughout the election campaign, although critics question whether he can implement his populist agenda amid the global economic meltdown.

The voting results released early Saturday showed that more than 77 per cent of the country's 23 million registered voters cast ballots.

While it was the country's fourth peaceful multiracial vote since the end of apartheid in 1994, the results in the Western Cape were a reminder that South Africa's racial divides still run deep.

The province is the heart of the country's wine and tourism industries, and also a region where mixed-race voters account for more than half the population while they are a small minority nationwide.

They were treated better than blacks under apartheid's racist rules, but now many feel marginalized and forgotten.

The largely white Democratic Alliance aggressively courted mixed-race voters ahead of Wednesday's vote and was close to gaining an outright majority in the provincial legislature there.

Democratic Alliance Leader Helen Zille is welcomed Friday by party members at the airport in Cape Town. (Schalk van Zuydam/Associated Press)Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille, who has won praise for her stint as mayor of Cape Town, said ahead of the elections that her main goals were to prevent the ANC's two-thirds majority and to win the Western Cape.