With just over 8% of ballots cast in the national elections having been counted by 8am on Thursday, the ANC seems to be doing well nationally as the governing party accounts for 41% share of the votes.
The DA comes in at second place at 28%, EFF at 7.1%, MK Party at 7.0%. It is still too early to tell if the current picture will remain the same.
Because of long queues, delays and technical glitches with the voter management devices (VMD), the commission had to fall back on the physical voters roll.
The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) announced its first set of results just after midnight, after delays to the casting of votes led to long queues.
In spite of the many challenges that characterised the day of the elections, the IEC revealed that it would not consider extending voting for another day as this would open the elections up to unintended consequences.
“We are not thinking about extending the elections for another day as doing so would expose the elections to unintended consequences. We are trying to balance two things here. We are trying to balance the need for accuracy and the need to declare the results without keeping the country in suspense for too long, as doing so,might result in a volatile situation” Mamabolo told members of the media last night.
Mamabolo acknowledged some of the issues that affected the smooth running of the elections. These included reports of power failure in some stations, network issues and the failure of VMDs.
On the issue of chaos that erupted at a Thokoza, Ekurhuleni, voting station where scores of angry voters who had not cast their votes and they expressed fear of being deprived of exercising their right, Mamabolo said: “We are aware of some of the difficulties in some parts of the country and we do not lament some of the delays as they are an indication of a good problem. Hence, we have committed ourselves to servicing all campuses.”
The Star