 And South Africans have started voting in municipal elections with the ruling African National Congress A&C facing discontent over poor services and stuck inequality 27 years after ending white minority rule. The A&C's rise to power in 1994 drew a line under centuries of racist oppression of a country's majority blacks by the descendants of white settlers. But critics say the liberators have proved less effective at more mundane tasks like fixing drains, supplying clean water and keeping the lights on. Failures to maintain roads, sewage treatment plants and creaking coal-fired power stations could cost the legacy party of late liberation hero Nelson Mantella.