Cape Town — As the election count nears it’s end, some political parties were left unhappy with the outcomes and have called for recounts throughout the country.
The African National Congress (ANC) look set to emerge as the winners, however the ruling party failed to secure 50% of the votes for an outright majority. With 98% of votes tallied, the ANC secured 40.13% of national votes, while the Democratic Alliance (DA) is comfortably in 2nd with 21.72%, and new party on the block, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) with a strong showing to win 14.8% of votes in their very first election, according to the IEC results dashboard.
However, after months of hard work to campaign, many political parties were left dissatisfied with the outcome of the results in certain provinces. African Congress for Transofrmation (ACT) president, Ace Magashule, has called on the IEC to recount the votes and said the party is considering legal action because he believes votes were rigged, EWN reported.
“Before we go to court, we will tell IEC to do its recount and they will see. Some of the votes have been taken from us and given to ActionSA – those are things we will prove.”” Magashule said.
According to The Citizen, the ACT only secured 11 576 votes in the Free State, a province that the province was expected to be strong in.
“The results cannot just be released, we are giving the IEC an opportunity to rectify this and we want all these things to be rectified publicly. We don’t want South Africans to think that we are spoilers, we are not spoilers.” he said.
Ace Magashule just arrived, bumps into IEC CEO Sy Mamabolo says the results are “completely rigged” pic.twitter.com/JwLR7WfALT
— Matshidiso Madia (@tshidi_lee) May 31, 2024
According to IOL, the MK Party is also looking to get votes recounted in KZN, despite the party leading in KZN with 45% of votes. MK party’s head of elections, Muzi Ntshingila is demanding a manual recount of the votes as he believes the party has secured a majority in KZN.
““We can’t be at 45%. We can’t sit back and watch democracy be destroyed,” he said, alleging the results captured did not match the results from their agents.” he said.
SABC News reported that MK party’s spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhela also said they picked up on some voting irregularities after they found people wandering at the Telkom servers.
“We find it strange that the IEC having a service provider like Telkom finds itself with a system that shuts for two hours. What transpired in those two hours? Even the question around who is this technician that was found. There is a lot of issues in terms of how the IEC has managed this process.” he said,
[WATCH] “We are urging our members not to act in any way that’s violent. But we’re raising these concerns and we’re rejecting these [results] and we request a recount.” – MK Party spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela #ElectionResults #BeyondTheBallot #Newzroom405 pic.twitter.com/Htr8bure8Q
— Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) May 31, 2024
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
