NATIONAL NEWS - By 10:00 Thursday, South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) seemed destined to retain its majority hold on the National Assembly after voting tallies at about 30 percent of voting districts in the country had been captured on the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) results system.
The votes counted and captured stood at nearly 3.7 million, with the ANC obtaining nearly 55 percent of the vote, followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) with 26 percent.
If the trend continues throughout the day, this would mean the ANC would see its significant majority reduced and support for the DA increasing by a few percentage points from 22 percent of the vote in the 2014 polls to over 26 percent.
Early indications are that the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) might see an increase in its support from the six percent it obtained in 2014, with currently more than 8% of the vote.
The Freedom Front Plus are surprise contenders in the top five race, having obtained more than 115,000 votes so far, but this could change as the counting and capturing process for more than two-thirds of voting districts was not yet complete.
Below is a snapshot of the 48 parties’ electoral fortunes nationally so far (with about 29% of the count done).
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) had around 62,000 votes, bearing in mind very few results from the KwaZulu-Natal province, its stronghold, had been captured on the results board.
The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) had about 41,000 votes cast in their favour.
New Kid on the block GOOD, formed by former DA mayor Patrica De Lille, was seventh on the board with about 28,000 votes.
Early counting placed the militant Black First Land First (BLF) in the far distance with less than 2,500 votes of the ballots counted so far. Early votes generally always come in from the smaller voting stations first, which tend to be mainly in rural areas.
BLF Spokesperson Lindsay Maasdorp told eNCA that they still felt confident about going to parliament because most votes had not yet been counted in their “strongholds”, especially Gauteng. They would need about 40,000 more votes to guarantee that.
Their nemesis, the Freedom Front Plus, were faring far better in initial tallies.
The DA has lodged 60 official objections and 2,500 complaints against the results, eNCA reports. These will be taken up with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) at around 10am when they meet at the national party liaison board meeting. Objections are far more serious than complaints.
They also want a full audit of all the results.
Other parties will also be lodging similar complaints, with Cope MP Deidre Carter claiming to have evidence of how easy it would have been for her to vote multiple times.
Earlier:
By 09:00 Thursday, South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) seemed destined to retain its majority hold on the National Assembly after voting tallies at a quarter of voting districts in the country had been captured on the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) results system.
The votes counted and captured stood at around three million, with the ANC obtaining 55 percent of the vote, followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) with 26 percent. If the trend continues throughout the day, this would mean the ANC would see its significant majority reduced and support for the DA increasing by a few percentage points from 22 percent of the vote in the 2014 polls to over 26 percent.
Early indications are that the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) might see an increase in its support from the six percent it obtained in 2014.
The Freedom Front Plus are surprise contenders in the top five race, having obtained 101,492 votes so far, but this could change as the counting and capturing process for around 75 percent of voting districts was not yet complete.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) had around 50,000 votes, bearing in mind very few results from the KwaZulu-Natal province, its stronghold, had been captured on the results board.
Earlier:
The provinces
With just under 10% of the vote counted in Gauteng, South Africa’s economic heartland and one of the expected battleground provinces, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) was also leading with over 120,000 votes, or just over 53% of the vote counted.
By 06:30 on Thursday, the main challengers, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) had tallied just under 60,000 and just over 30,000 votes, respectively.
The next best party was the Freedom Front Plus with just under 10,000 votes, while the rest trailed in even further behind with less than a percent of the vote each.
Gauteng is SA’s richest province, contributing over a third of the national gross domestic product while it is also the most populous, home to a staggering 14 million people.
With less than a quarter of votes counted in South Africa’s border provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, the ANC was also leading the pack of political parties seeking seats in these provincial legislatures.
Early results captured on the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) system, show the ANC leading in Mpumalanga where around 20 percent of votes cast had been counted. By 7am, the ruling party was leading with 186,453 votes, followed by the Democratic Alliance with 25,603 and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) wih 22,708.
Limpopo appeared to follow 2014 voting trends, with the ANC leading with 62,703 votes, followed by the EFF, which replaced the DA as the official opposition in that province in the 2014 poll.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) looks to be regaining lost ground in its stronghold province of KwaZulu-Natal where early election results show it putting in a strong showing behind the ANC.
By 7am on Wednesday, with just over 150,000 votes counted, the ANC was leading with just under 80,000 votes, followed by the IFP on 32,700 and the DA with 18,000.
The DA is the official opposition in the province but a resurgent IFP is putting up a solid push for the title of official opposition which it lost to the DA in the 2014 general election.
In neighbouring Eastern Cape, with 443,000 votes counted, the ANC was leading with 307,000, followed by the DA with 78,000 and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) with just under 30,000.
The ANC is the governing party in the province but in the 2016 local government elections saw a coalition of the DA and EFF take control of Nelson Mandela Bay, which includes Port Elizabeth, before that coalition collapsed amid acrimony.
A three-party dominance also emerged in the provinces of the Free State, North West and Northern Cape.
By 07h30, the ANC was ahead in all three provinces, capturing 64,493 votes in the Free State, 103,023 in North West and 99,660 in the Northern Cape.
However, less than a third of the votes had been counted and captured on the IEC dashboard in the Free State and North West, while the process was almost two-thirds complete in the Northern Cape – South Africa’s largest province, known for also having the country’s smallest population.
If the trend continues, the EFF will remain the official opposition in North West after obtaining around 26,604 votes thus far.
With vote counting and capturing at an advanced stage in the Northern Cape, the DA had obtained around a third of the vote compared to the just over 50 percent of the vote having gone to the ANC.
