Durban — Former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) was leading in the fiercely-contested KwaZulu-Natal by midday on Thursday following Wednesday’s election.
At around lunchtime on Thursday, the MKP, the ANC splinter party, was leading in KZN with 56 931 votes.
The ANC, which had been governing the coastal province since 2004 after dislodging the IFP, followed with just 28 699, with the IFP taking third spot with 23 277.
The DA had just over 18 000 votes and the EFF came in fifth with over 3 000 votes.
However, there was a long way to go as only 20% of votes had been counted nationally around 2pm on Thursday.
Ntombifuthi Masinga, the Electoral Commission of SA’s (IEC’s) KZN electoral officer, updated the media, saying the counting was going well in the province.
She also announced that two voters had died in two separate incidents in the province.
Masinga said voting was still ongoing in eThekwini, the ANC stronghold, and also in the Pietermaritzburg and Ugu districts.
The picture is expected to change by Friday when more votes would have been counted.
Around lunchtime on Thursday, the IEC confirmed that 20% of votes had been counted nationally.
The ANC stood at 948 678 followed by the DA with 542 951, with Julius Malema’s EFF bagging 192 700, the MKP 172 995, while the PA was at 89 000.
As results trickled in, the South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research predicted that the ANC would get around 42% of the vote in the national election.
For the first time since 2004, the ANC’s outright majority was threatened in KwaZulu-Natal as the MKP appeared to be winning its traditional voting districts.
The party-s majority was also in the balance nationally.
All indications were that the ANC would drop below 50% nationally, in Gauteng - the province that houses the government’s administrative capital of Pretoria and the economic hub of Johannesburg - and in KZN, home to the Durban Harbour, the biggest in sub-Saharan Africa.
The official results are expected to be announced on Sunday. More than 27.7 million people had registered to vote nationally, with 5.7 million in KZN.
WhatsApp your views on this story at 071 485 7995.
Daily News