Follow the 2019 national election results live right here!

The live feed into the map from the IEC below will update automatically as votes are counted and tallied countrywide. Check back regularly to see how power will ultimate be apportioned in South Africa’s sixth democratic dispensation since 1994.

Follow the elections live report blow by blow here.

Follow the election results as they happen below. You can click or tap on each of the provinces to bring up the provincial results (note that they do not reflect the provincial legislature ballots).

The ANC was leading in early official results on Thursday following the first electoral test of whether President Cyril Ramaphosa has reinvigorated support for the ruling party.

With just over half of voting districts tallied, the Election Commission count put the African National Congress ahead, with its closest rival the Democratic Alliance trailing at a distant 23 percent.

Ramaphosa, 66, took over last year after the African National Congress (ANC) forced then-president Jacob Zuma to resign after nine years dominated by corruption allegations and economic problems.

The party that wins the most seats in parliament selects the country’s president, who will be sworn in on May 25.

“The outcome of this election will be a major boost for investors… and investor confidence, it’s about confidence and about the future,” Ramaphosa said after voting on Wednesday.

The ANC’s reputation was badly sullied under Zuma.

“We apologise for our mistakes.”

Support for the ANC has fallen in every election since 2004 with the party taking 54 percent in 2016 municipal elections, compared with 62 percent in 2014’s national vote.

Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) were swept to power with a landslide in the country’s first multi-racial polls that marked the end of apartheid in 1994.

Most opinion surveys suggest the ANC will secure nearly 60 percent of the vote, thanks to Ramaphosa’s appeal and a fractured opposition.

Dirk Coetzee, a professor at UNISA’s political science department, said “the higher the percentage for the ANC, the more it will give him (Ramaphosa) bargaining power”.

“If Ramaphosa gets below 50 percent he will be very vulnerable” to challenges from rivals within the ANC, he added.

The poor are getting poorer’

The ANC has been confronted by deepening public anger over its failure to tackle poverty and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa.

“We have given them 25 years but the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer,” said voter Anmareth Preece, 28, a teacher from Coligny in North West province. “We need a government that governs for the people, not for themselves.”

The economy grew just 0.8 percent in 2018 and unemployment hovers around 27 percent — soaring to over 50 percent among young people.

Of the 47 opposition parties in the race, only the main opposition centrist DA and the radical-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) are major players.

The DA is hoping to shed its image as a white, middle-class party.

Its first black leader, Mmusi Maimane, is contesting his maiden general election since taking the helm in 2015, and is expected to make modest gains on the DA’s 2014 vote share of 22 percent.

The EFF, founded six years ago by former ANC youth leader Julius Malema, is predicted to make major gains, growing from 6.3 percent to a forecast 11 percent. The partial results show it at eight percent.

“The ANC has taken people for granted. There is some arrogance which has crept in,” said voter Mandla Booi, 45, in Port Elizabeth on the south coast.

The EFF, which appeals mainly to young voters and the poor, has campaigned on a policy of seizing land from white owners to give to blacks.

Enforced land redistribution is also ANC policy — alarming some investors.

Earlier:

About 26.8 million voters were registered to cast their ballots at 22,925 polling stations countrywide.

IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela confirmed on Wednesday night that the first results were expected from about 11pm, with the smaller stations normally reporting results first.

She told IOL: “At 9pm when our voting stations close our officials and political parties will take a two-minute break and then they begin the sorting and the counting. After they have done the sorting and the counting, historically the first station that posts the results comes somewhere between 11pm and midnight.”

Results only really started streaming in from around 3am on Thursday from other smaller voting stations, with the next morning at 11am usually the time when bigger data streams from other stations began to flood in.

The IEC is expected to announce the final results on Saturday, with political parties given until Friday to lodge objections.

Earlier, South Africans went to the polls in the country’s sixth democratic elections on Wednesday, braving cold weather, rains and a few operational glitches to elect a new political leadership that faces the daunting task of kickstarting the stalled economy.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) is likely to keep its 25-year-long grip on power, but could get less than the 62.15 percent of votes it won at the previous national elections in 2014, as some voters vent their anger over a lack of jobs, poor basic services and allegations of government corruption in recent years.

Ramaphosa, who cast his ballot in Johannesburg’s Soweto township, pleaded with the electorate not to boycott the polls, saying even those who opted to stage protests on election day, should first vote.

“I have always said to our people who want to protest and not vote that that is not the right way of raising issues,” the president said. “Go and vote and, after that, you can stand and say: I have voted because I want my issues to be addressed.”

He said this as community protests were reported in Cape Town, Durban and Vuwani in Limpopo where residents burnt tyres and barricaded roads, vowing not to vote until the government addressed their gripes.

At the Boshoek settlement outside Rustenburg in North West, which alongside KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) was identified as a potentially troublesome province on election day, disgruntled residents stuck to their vow to ignore the polls and went about their normal business.

“I won’t be voting today. I voted before but I live worse than before. I live in a rotting tent, when it rains I get wet but I am supposed to vote. No change, no vote,” said Rosina Mokoe.

But 89-year-old granny Thokozile Mkhwanazi, from Mahangin in rural KZN, said she would continue voting as long as she lived, insisting that life was much better than what it was under white apartheid rule.

“We were living in difficult times, where your life was being controlled by someone else; we used to work at the farms without getting paid,” Mkhwanazi recalled.

Voting started on time at 7am at several of the country’s 22,924 polling stations, but there were delays at others as electoral officials grappled with equipment failure, among some challenges.

In Cape Town, police had to intervene at polling station at Samora Machel in ward 88 after a crowd angry over standing in the rain for a long time tried to force their way in.

An Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) official who declined to be named said his team had been issued with only one scanner, resulting in long delays in processing voters.

There was drama outside a polling station in Port Elizabeth when police and the military were called to inspect a house alleged to be storing a ballot box, with the ANC accusing the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) of nefarious intent. However, it later emerged that the box in question was a black utility box used to store toilet rolls.

Voting got off to a brisk start in Polokwane in Limpopo as residents came out in numbers at various voting stations across the city despite the overcast and chilly weather.

Limpopo is the home province of Julius Malema, leader of the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) which garnered 6.35 percent of votes at its electoral debut in 2014, drawing away some support from both the ANC and the DA, which took 22.23 percent.

“I want to thank South Africans for coming out in their numbers and exercising their democratic rights. A lot of people died so we could do this: We have done everything possible to win this election,” Malema said after voting at Mponegele Primary School in Seshego.

The occasion was not without incident — Malema slammed an IEC official who unsuccessfully tried to cut off his wife Mantwa’s long artificial nails before allowing her to vote, saying this was necessary in order to put a mark on her to show she had cast her ballot.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane said the elections amounted to a referendum on whether South Africans wanted to choose corruption or hope.

“I’m not asking people to marry me, I’m asking them to vote for change and put the best, the most competent government in place. I can take this country forward,” Maimane told the African News Agency (ANA) at a voting station in Pretoria.

Just over 26.75 million people were registered to make their choice from 48 political parties, and polling was set to close at 9pm, although all those already in the queue by then would be allowed to still vote beyond the cut-off time.

– African News Agency (ANA)

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