JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has lost its outright majority for the first time in a devastating blow for the party once led by Nelson Mandela. The ANC has dominated South African politics since winning in the first post-apartheid elections 30 years ago.

The ANC was braced for a disappointing outcome, predicted by polls before Wednesday’s elections, but the final results are even more sobering. It won 40 percent of the vote, falling from 57% in 2019.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    12·
    6 months ago

    “an historic” isn’t incorrect, neither is “a historic” it’s the same issue as “a European” - the a/an choice is based off of pronunciation which is inconsistent because languages diverge (especially english)… the dumb thing is that “an” is written instead of just being written as “a” and optionally pronounced as “an” when followed by a vowel it’d meld into.

    Anyways, both choices are valid. The only truly incorrect thing is that en-uk use “speeded” as the past tense of “speed” and that’s just fucking awful - we can all agree on that. /s

    • reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 months ago

      In the US, the H isn’t silent. So we’re taught to say “a historic” and “a hospital”. But for some reason many US journalists like to pretend they went to Eton or something. And NPR is in the US. So I was commenting about how nice it was to see a US-based journalist use US grammar for a change.