Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president-in-waiting, has pledged to forge ahead with ambitious campaign promises despite his party’s failure to secure the two-thirds majority it had targeted in last week’s election and a deteriorating economy.

Final results showed that the African National Congress’s share of the vote declined for the first time since it came to power at the the demise of apartheid in 1994, albeit to a still formidable 65.9 per cent.