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.
So far the African National Congress (ANC) is leading with 53.7%, the Democratic Alliance (DA) with 20.3%, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) with 7.8%.
However it remains important to remember that these figures are preliminary and not a complete representation of results, the IEC said.
IEC CEO Sy Mamabolo briefed the media at the Results Operations Center in Gallagher Convention Centre on Wednesday evening and confirmed that no provision was made for a second day of elections, denying claims of deliberate delays on the part of the commission.
Even as Mamabolo was addressing the media, scenes from long queues in some of the centres around Joburg were being flighted on social media. Voting in some centres were hampered by ID scanners that were not functioning while other areas such as Soweto were said to have been affected by loadshedding after an outage at an Orlando East substation.
In the Eastern Cape, reports said voting at five stations didn’t happen because of service delivery protests even after the police and local authorities tried to intervene.
Some have said the IEC underestimated the impact of elections and should take the blame, considering some voting stations were not operational even by 9 in the morning.
ANC first deputy secretary general Nomvula Mokonyane said the recent changes in electoral protocol and the collapse of scanners at voting stations across the country has caused issues for many who cast their vote.
“There have been issues that had to do with the glitches and the new rules that the IEC has attended to. The issues were about the voter management devices that were dysfunctional,” Mokonyane said.
EFF premier candidate for Gauteng, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi criticised the logistical problems at several voting stations, especially university campuses across the country, with power outages, lack of lighting and delays plaguing the students’ experience of casting their vote.
DA leader John Steenhuisen thanked the nation for participating, but said the challenges faced by voters remained alarming.
“We are deeply concerned about the frustrations caused by issues relating to voter management devices, ballot paper shortages, long queues and other issues with the IEC’s systems,” Steenhuisen said.
However, Mamabolo said it was not clear which provinces would be the first to send the results, but the commission’s leader board would start reflecting results as soon as audited votes start coming in.
He said in past elections, the results would come in at around 1 in the morning but because of the multiple ballots, it would take longer this year.
IEC deputy CEO Masego Sheburi said the results are expected to be released by Sunday.
“The Commission plans to release the results on the fourth day, not because we are not prepared, but because we want to factor in the third ballot to deal with the 50 percent additional work imposed by the third ballot,” Sheburi said.
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