Gauteng vote counting lags behind

SBy 12pm on 9 May, only 87.32 percent of votes had been counted in Gauteng – the province where the ANC faced its biggest threat to power.

The ANC, DA, and Economic Freedom Fighters are fighting for control of the country’s economic hub, but the ruling party had taken the early lead with 1 995 678 votes – equating to 52.42 percent of votes.

The DA and the EFF trailed with 1 228 027 (32.25 percent) and 380,673 (10.00 percent) votes respectively.

Earlier, DA leader Helen Zille said she was concerned about the slow pace of counting in Gauteng.

“It is unprecedented, it’s never ever happened… counting in Gauteng is effectively at a standstill.”

As a result, she had requested that every DA party agent send the results that were noted from each of the voting districts in order for the DA to conduct an independent tally.

She said the slow pace of counting had raised many questions.

The EFF also expressed its concern with the delayed counting processes in a press statement released in the early hours of 9 May.

“The Economic Freedom Fighters demands the immediate release of Gauteng results,” read the statement.

The party went on to claim the delay in results was linked to the ANC lagging at around the 50 percent – lower than the ruling party typically performed.

However, Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) chief electoral officer, Mosotho Moepya said counting had slowed after IEC staff, who had been working for almost 48 hours, were sent home to rest.

He said counting recommenced on the morning of 9 May and more results began streaming in at 8am.

Responding to incidents of ballot papers being found dumped in Gauteng, Moepya said these were subject to a police investigation.

In one incident, hundreds of ballots, bearing predominantly DA votes, were found in Lynnwood in Pretoria.

Zille said it was unacceptable that ballot papers had been dumped adding that that party would demand answers regarding the incident.

However, Zille said she was satisfied that the dumped ballots had already been counted and therefore the incident would not impact the election results.

She noted that she was “very uncomfortable” that ballot boxes and papers had been found in various parts of Gauteng, raising her concerns about Gauteng’s results.

Moepya confirmed that all the ballots that had been found had already been counted and would therefore not affect the results.

However, the incident were not a result of negligence, he said, adding that in two instances ballots had fallen off the trucks transporting them, and in three separate incidents ballots were stolen during acts of vandalism.

“We are finding people vandalising our storage areas… to create doubts as to whether these ballots were taken into account or not,” said Moepya.