IEC starts counting, despite delays caused by technical glitches and long queues

Johnathan Paoli

Despite complaints of sabotage and technical glitches being lodged by the country’s three top political parties, as well as frustrations and even conflict from voters, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has commenced the counting of ballots.

The IEC has reported this morning that “there has been an update of completed and audited results @IECSouthAfrica. We’re at 5.53% of the results and will start providing projections soon” in its latest update.

The IEC said that the majority of voting stations closed late last night due to long queues of voters that required clearing.

More than 26 million eligible voters were expected to cast their votes for the national and provincial elections, which kicked off on Monday with special votes and ended in the early hours of Thursday morning at some voting stations where the majority of the votes were cast, with a total of 52 political parties taking part.