By 1.50am the ANC had 51 percent of the national votes counted, the DA had 34.64 percent and the EFF had 5.42 percent.
|||Pretoria – The counting of the results for the 2016 municipal elections continued through the night after South Africans voted on Wednesday.
Just before 1.30am on Thursday morning, a bell to announce new results sounded and results of the first completed voting district appeared on the screen at the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s National Results Operation Centre in Pretoria.
It showed that NC064 – Kamiesberg at 100 percent as all 16 of the 16 voting districts had been counted. The African National Congress had taken control of its first council.
It was still early for results to be a true reflection of the elections as only one council was completed out of 213, but by 1.50am the ANC had 51 percent of the national votes counted, the Democratic Alliance had 34.64 percent and the Economic Freedom Fighters had 5.42 percent.
The Inkatha Freedom Party had 2.47 percent, the Freedom Front Plus had 1.41 percent and Other Parties had 2.1 percent.
Political party representatives, IEC officials and journalists sat around chatting and continuously checking the results as the numbers changed slightly every few minutes.
“This is going to take forever but will be interesting,” one party representative said.
The IEC announced the first results on Wednesday night, just before 9pm.
“We have reached the moment that we have all looked forward to and it is a moment of pride for us as a nation,” Independent Electoral Commission SA (IEC) Chairperson Glen Mashinini said, briefing the media and political parties at the results centre in Pretoria.
With three large screens erected on the wall behind the podium, the results went up. One screen showed fireworks as the main screen in the centre showed the results of Ward 6 of EC123 in the Great Kei, Eastern Cape.
From the information on the screen it showed 22 people voted. The DA received 10 votes, the ANC seven and an independent candidate received five votes.
Mashinini said these were the first audited results from the local Government elections.
Cheers came from the DA as the results indicated they had secured 45.45 percent and the ANC 31.82 percent.
Earlier, IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela said they still expected “many, many results” to come in throughout the night.
She said the results would come in slowly but that the final results would only be ready on Saturday.
African News Agency