IEC to declare election results some time this weekend

The Electoral Commission of South Africa says it is pulling out all the stops to finalise the capturing and auditing of results for the national and provincial elections and remains on course “to complete this process imminently”. 

“The commission will declare results of this election sometime over the weekend after which the lists of elected representatives will be published in the government gazette and thereafter handed over to the chief justice for purposes of convening the first meeting of the National Assembly,” chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said in a media briefing on Friday.

Mamabolo said counting at all voting stations was completed on Thursday and the commission now had copies of all the results at local IEC offices. 

He said the process was now under way in capturing those results onto the IEC system for tallying and eventual seat allocation.

Mamabolo said by 4pm on Friday 71,76% of results had been captured, with the Northern Cape having finalised the capturing of its results. 

In the Eastern Cape 92.13% of results had been captured, in the Free State it was at 95.52%, 75.33% in Gauteng, 75.37% in KwaZulu-Natal, 91.94% in Mpumalanga, 80% in Limpopo and 88% each in North West and Western Cape. 

Mamabolo said ballots were counted at voting stations where they were cast and this was done in front of party agents and observers. 

“We regret the incident this morning where the leader board at the [national results] centre and website could not show the results. Our system did not crash and no data was compromised,” Mamabolo said. 

Result capturing and other result collation activities had proceeded without interruption, he said.

Mamabolo said there were 36 objections raised by political parties during the elections. He did not have details about what the objections were. 

The commission had dealt with 15 of those objections and was communicating with the other remaining objectors. 

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