The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has issued an apology following the system crash, the board went blank.
According to reports the system crashed around 2AM, leaving political parties and South Africans at large fuming.
Before the cash, more than 50% of the national votes had already been counted.
According to reports, technicians were trying to debug and improve the system.
“They found a bug, someone planted malware on their systems, we are de-bugging and trying to resolve it ,” said an unconfirmed report.
“We apologise for the issue with our public facing NPE system, and are working on restoring service. The results system is still operational and local offices continue to capture results,” said IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela.
https://x.com/iecsouthafrica/status/1796243086294626672?s=46&t=oeMLeLVU-0aswZe6EmGwPA
IEC just told journalists that the system will be up by 9am. They say its a system fault. They are at 58% vote counting
The Commission has been accused of being incompetent, and there are few challenges that they are currently dealing with.
On Thursday, IEC appealed to the public to assist them to recover a ballot box that went missing in transit from the voting station Matamzana Dube School in VD 43412767, KZN282, uMhlathuze, to the municipal electoral office for storage.
“The Electoral Commission appeals to citizens in and around Ward 14 uMhlathuze, in KwaZulu-Natal, to be on the lookout for an IEC branded ballot box that went missing in transit from the voting station Matamzana Dube School in VD 43412767, KZN282, uMhlathuze, to the municipal electoral office for storage. The ballots in the box have been counted, reconciled and validated. The Electoral Commission is required, by law, to store ballots cast in general elections for a period of six months. Furthermore, the IEC appeals to anyone who finds the ballot box to return it to us. Citizens are reminded that anyone found to be in possession of ballots is liable to criminal “ said IEC.
South Africans took to social media platform, X, criticizing the Commission.
“You guys are useless, you failed South African…You were busy with courts instead of preparing for elections mxm,” wrote Xolani Shamase.
“You can’t be asking us this. It’s suppose to be escorted by police. Why must tax payers do everything; we go to work; pay taxes; now we must come back from work and go find a box you lost after paying you to make sure this goes smoothly?? Kanjani????” wrote Ayanda Skhosana.
On voting day, Police Minister Bheki Cele told journalists that ballot papers will be escorted by police and metro police.
This is a developing story.
Star Saturday