Views: 5
Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) staff in the Western Cape are working around the clock to finalise election results.
As of 16:00, the IEC in the province had completed 34.22% of votes.
Nationally, 21.11% of votes had been completed.
During a media briefing on Thursday afternoon, the IEC’s provincial head, Michael Hendrickse, said small voting districts were the first to start trickling in votes.
“But we hope to finalise as soon as possible. We hope to pass the halfway mark by the end of the day,” he said.
On Wednesday, frustrated voters waited in snaking queues, with failing voter management devices (VMDs) causing massive delays.
Thousands of Western Cape voters were still queueing well after 23:00.
Others left polling stations without voting.
ROLLING COVERAGE |Â Projection: Panyaza Lesufi’s Gauteng ANC loses 15 points, drops to calamitous 35%
The voting process was then switched to a completely manual system.
Hendrickse said the situation was country-wide and required that national procedures be taken.
“So it was a country-wide decision… It wasn’t something that was specifically done in the local sense. It was something taken across the country in order to facilitate the voting process,” he said.
Hendrickse said the VMD device had worked very well during the registration weekend.
“But they were only using one application on the local ground. In this particular case, there were a lot of people who were using the same application, and a number of applications were being used on our local management device. I’m not saying it is an excuse, but that may be one of the contributing factors.
“We need to look at the training of our officials, bearing in mind that the legislation for this election was passed very late. I think it was about 10 days before the election when the president actually signed the last amendment into law.
“There are a number of contributing factors. So, to extend it, we said we were ready. But overall, as I said, we need to be sure that when we say we are ready, that we make sure that we understand the conditions under which we say we’re going to be ready,” he said.