this is g.w. news live from berlin tonight polls have closed at a pivotal election for south africa the ruling african national congress looks set to extend its twenty five years in power but voters are angry over rampant corruption and spiraling inequality the a.n.c. can no longer take voters support for granted also coming up iran announces its partial withdrawal from that landmark two thousand and fifteen nuclear deal exactly one year after the u.s. pulled out tehran says it could soon resume enriching uranium to build nuclear.

i'm off it's good to have you with those polls have just closed in south africa in the most closely contested election there since the end of apartheid the ruling african national congress is tipped to retain power but it could face a real challenge from a breakaway opposition party after its failure to improve the living conditions in its quarter century in charge. voting day in south africa twenty five years after the first three elections many citizens are now fed up with the way the country is being run and during that entire time the african national congress has been in power people say south africa is mired in crime corruption and economic stagnation. even president cyril ramaphosa who's from the a.n.c.

admits to the problems corruption walks into the way. the term age got into the way of focusing. you were brought into the way that admission may not win over voters the way the a.n.c. did at the last election five years ago when they took sixty two percent of the vote we just want them to take care of us take care of the take away two hundred make sure that our kids are having topes listen to what the people want it's very easy to stand they make promises bad enough it's another thing to actually implement and become the government that people vote for you don't switch up on us because now you empower. another possible winner could be center right democratic alliance leader musi my mana who cast his vote in so went to the cradle of the fight against apartheid but the biggest challenger to the a.n.c. could well be leftist leader julius malema of the economic freedom fighters he's

pushed for a redistribution of prime agricultural land much of which is owned by the white minority. and now president ramaphosa of the a.n.c. has jumped on that bandwagon himself wanting to accelerate that redistribution in the hope of luring votes away from. the results of the election are expected by saturday. and w.'s christina is in johannesburg for she's covering the election for his good evening to you the really a.n.c. party it is remarkable isn't it it's been in power for twenty five years it's had basically a free house for a quarter of a century and now would struggling to keep the voters on its side what is the a.n.c. offering voters to keep their support for the a.n.c. is offering settled on a process after nearly

a decade off and levels of corruption and mismanagement in government and a lack of service delivery the a.n.c. say add to the leadership. these issues are going to be addressed it is the first time we hear the ruling party talk of having reflected and admitting the stakes that it's made them opposed his message to supporters and people who have not supporting the party is that and to my leadership things are going to change much of this is really hinge what i'm opposed to so the result of this election what they see comes up at the end can be a testament to raid just how much support africans buy into it up will says the vision of what he will give the country and to his presidency and you've been talking to voters today they've been telling you do they believe what they're hearing. brant it's been twenty five years and lot of south africans are living in die of poverty the issues that people have as they go into

this election of bread and butter issues people wake up and they are basic services in the communities that they live in we're talking about water so we're talking about sanitation people living without homes no roofs over their heads so these are the issues some people think after all of you see is is the a.v.c. really going to deliver in the future some people though have bought into the idea i've spoken to a few supporters who say the only reason they came out to the polls today to vote for the agencies because i'm up i'll say is president. how real is the threat christina from the radical. economic freedom fighters for the ruling party i mean are we talking about. a spoiler here in this election. but brant if if is arguably the reason why we are calling this election the most contested election in the years post a party if it has really changed the game here it's also the reason the a.n.c.

has been running on its heels essentially julius malema as message of taking back lead from the white minority and giving it back to black south africans has resonated with a lot of poor black south africans who really have had no comfort from the a.n.c. all they've seen is a government that is full of corrupt officials people mismanaging state funds only a few benefiting and so when julius malema goes out and speaks of message to people who are desperate to have been waiting to hear broken promises from the african national congress you can imagine this is the only party by the way that's for costa to grow in supports the a.n.c. and of course to decipher his biggest opposition party the democratic alliance they're both expected to support so right now that if a very young party only about five years old is expected to take about ten percent of the electorate that is quite something so to this malema is a force to be reckoned with and that is something the a.n.c. knows all too well r.d.

wus kristina with some first analysis on this election nights in south africa christina thank you note to the day's other big story iran has said that it will stop complying with parts of that landmark nuclear deal struck with world powers back in two thousand and fifteen president hassan rouhani made the announcement exactly one year after the united states through the agreement into jeopardy by unilaterally withdrawing from the deal was designed to limit iran's ability to produce nuclear fuel now although rouhani says iran could resume enriching and stockpiling you're a. patient says run out read the headlines of iran's newspapers president hassan rouhani says he's not trying to destroy but rather to save the nuclear agreement by leveling an ultimatum to the five countries that are still signatories. but that if

these five countries return to the table within sixty days and we reach agreements on oil sales and banking then we will uphold our side of the nuclear deal. under the two thousand and fifteen nuclear deal iran agreed to let international atomic energy agency monitors into their nuclear facilities and only enrich uranium for civilian purposes in return economic sanctions on the country were lifted the international atomic energy agency says iran has been meeting its end of the bargain but that didn't prevent the u.s. withdrawing from the deal last year and reinstating sanctions now iran is threatening to enrich its uranium closer to weapons grade levels the move comes as the u.s. has been stepping up its anti iran rhetoric secretary of state mike pompei oh made an impromptu visit to iraq this week accusing iran of posing a threat to u.s. soldiers in the country just days ago the u.s.

deployed a carrier to the persian gulf the trumpet ministration policy is to exert maximum pressure on iran and their sanctions are hitting hard iran's oil exports are down and their currency has taken a dive things are getting tight for tehran. so where does this leave the iranian nuclear deal we'll get the view from brussels that's where our correspondent terry souls is joining us tonight good evening to you terry we know that the european union has spent the past year trying to rescue your radio nuclear deal why has it for when so short. well it has rescued the iranian nuclear deal the deal is not dead despite the united states pulling out in the united states wanting very forcefully for that deal to be defunct so it defies some people's odds even that the deal still exists but what has happened is that the u.s. has put so much pressure on the other signatories on european union companies doing business in iran on china on russia to pull out of the agreement to stop doing

business with iran that iran hasn't hasn't received the benefits that it was promised in exchange for curtailing its nuclear enrichment activities and other actions that the rest of the world felt might be able to lead to a nuclear weapon so now iran did exercise what it calls to teach it patience and it simply says look our economy is not doing as well as you promised us it would you have not stood up to the united states and now basically we're going to start calling some conditions of our own we know that germany is one of the five countries which remain signatories to this deal which is take a listen to what germany's foreign minister said today. that in shit. we don't agree with the steps taken by iran today first. of all the message is and remains clear we along with our partners unconditionally stand by the nuclear agreement and that's why we expect iran to stand by the agreement completely and

unconditionally. so there were you know we've got iran accusing its partners including germany of not upholding their part of the nuclear deal is that a fair assessment and what can the e.u. do now moving forward. iran does have a point is economy has not returned to any state of robustness as it had hoped with following the deal it has completely implemented it according to the international atomic energy agency which is responsible for monitoring it and this is because of the u.s. sanctions the sanctions that the u.s. has has warned would be put on any country which continued any company in fact which continue doing business with iran which is completely legal under the iran nuclear deal so it puts a new companies in a in a really tough position e.u. governments in a tough position but iran is right that it hasn't gotten what it expected out of this deal at the same time the european union has tried so hard to keep it together

it has implemented it is in the process of implementing i should say a system that would allow payments to go to iran without coming under u.s. sanctions that's not up and running yet and so ron has the right to be a little bit impatient about that but i believe that the e.u. certainly feels a bit betrayed by iran doing this giving it sixty days to somehow turn the situation around and that's a dangerous situation in iran may not be in violation of the agreement within the next sixty days if it returns to sort of crawling toward richmond activities again but it could get there very quickly after the sixty day period and that worries everyone it's not in anyone's interest for this to happen and iran even says itself it doesn't want to pull out of the deal it simply wants the e.u. to boost its economic its economic activity with iran so that both sides are getting what was agreed and he was basically in in a position now where it needs to work is as hard as it can to to fulfill the really

the promise is in need to iran and to hope that tehran doesn't actually move quickly back toward enrichment activities you know that's a very good point rouhani said today that this is surgery to save the deal not to destroy a correspondent on the story in brussels terry as always thank you. here's some of the other stories now that are making headlines around the world that double trump is used presidential privilege to block the release of information demanded by congress the white house wants to suppress material including rejected parts of the model report on russian interference in the u.s. election house of representatives committee as launched contempt proceedings against attorney general bill barr for failing to turn over the documents a pakistani christian woman who spent eight years on death row falsely charged with blasphemy has left the country. lawyer says that she's arrived in canada to be reunited with her daughter's birth where the one blessing charges last year's protests throughout pakistan and death threats from religious extremists.

turkey's main opposition party the c.h.p. has made a dramatic bid to overturn past election results favoring the ruling party the opposition are hitting back after the electoral of forty scrap istanbul's recently your election of that contest was won by the c.h.p. and a humiliating defeat for president everyone's a k party authorities ruled that the election must be rerun. yes you're watching the w. news live from berlin up next a conflict zone special we ask for european lawmakers for their take on the european union's future stay tuned for that that's going to be a good discussion i'm back at the top of the hour with more world news followed by the day we'll have extensive coverage tonight on the iran deal and the south africa

elections have to see it in. europe the big idea. what's become of it. will it look like. being for a better future isn't enough europe requires our conscious attention. yours in the elections twenty nineteen may twenty sixth on. france's president claims europe is in the grip of a so.