South Africa deserves an oscar for the municipal elections, President Thabo Mbeki said to cheers and applause at the closing ceremony of the municipal elections in Pretoria on Saturday.
According to a report on IOL Mbeki also correctly predicted in his speech that South Africa would win the golden statuette for best foreign film for Tsotsi.
He congratulated the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) for overseeing the elections as well as political parties who had accepted defeat without contesting the results in court.
In the report Mbeki urged political leaders to co-operate in areas where there was no political majority. These included the Cape Metro and 30 local municipalities.
"In areas where there is no clear winner, the political parties who used rough language to each other during their campaign, must find ways to work together to change peoples lives for the better," he is reported as saying.
He said this was important because local government was a critical area where all the promises made by parties to the people during their campaign now had to be delivered.
The incidents of violence in some areas during the election also had to be acknowledged, he said.
Mbeki added that it had to be an important part of political education in South Africa that no-one could be elected into a position or denied a position because of acts of violence against them or on their behalf.
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