‘Eastern Cape has renewed its contract with Cutting Edge,’ say voters as ANC set to retain province

South African voters have taken to social media to voice their “frustrations” with Eastern Cape residents who voted for the African National Congress (ANC).

As of 2 pm, the ANC was sitting at 63.72%, followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) with 15.53% and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) with 9.26%.

The Patriotic Alliance (PA) and United Democratic Movement (UDM) are battling it out with 2.31% and 2.23%, respectively.

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Vote counting has been completed in 1,108 of the 4,868 voting districts in the Eastern Cape.

According to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), voting went fairly well in all provinces except the Eastern Cape.

This is due to the taxi driver protests in some areas, resulting in the closure of some voting stations for safety reasons.

In some areas, residents stayed away from the polls as a form of protest over service delivery and the government’s failure to settle their land disputes.

Furthermore, Eastern Cape police arrested 17 individuals for attempting to prevent citizens from voting on Wednesday.

With the taxi violence in Mthatha, there were five arrests and we recovered three firearms.

Eastern Cape ‘decaying’

Earlier this year, the African Transformation Movement (ATM) complained about the state of the Eastern Cape under ANC rule.

It claimed people were leaving the province in numbers due to a lack of service delivery

“Irregular and fruitless expenditure of Eastern Cape municipalities under the ANC government, is at an unbelievable amount of R10.6 billion,” said the party, reacting to Premier Oscar Mabuyane’s Sopa in February.

Also in February, the Auditor General exposed the Enoch Mgijima local municipality in the Eastern Cape as the worst-run municipality in the country.

“Eighty-seven percent of debt is irrecoverable and the municipality couldn’t collect it. The average debt collection period was 317 days and they are losing 22% of distribution electricity,” said Shereen Noble of the Auditor General of South Africa at the time.

‘Can’t be helped’

With issues of service delivery faced in the Eastern Cape, South Africans hoped residents would finally vote the ANC out and find an alternative.

But the residents exercised their democratic right and voted for a party of their choice.

These were some of the reactions on social media: