Several issues were experienced by the IEC at its voting stations on election day.

By mid-Thursday (30/5) afternoon, less than a third of the votes had been counted. Only 501 out of 1 586 voting districts have completed counting.

Political parties have complained about technical difficulties the commission faced on Wednesday (29/5), saying the IEC should have planned better for these elections.

‘We are disappointed in the IEC’

“The IEC should have planned this better because they saw that as far as the voters are concerned, the number has increased and it has increased a lot compared to the last elections,” said the Free State MK Party elections coordinator Sandile Mabiza.

“Next time they should prepare properly so that our people don’t find themselves in long queues. Maybe they can start on time; this is very important and key.”

“We are disappointed in the IEC,” said Free State DA media officer Paul Kotze. 

“We do believe they dropped the ball on this. They weren’t prepared, and some things could’ve been done to prepare for the day but they weren’t done.

“We do want to thank everyone who came out and stood in those long queues some even for four hours, they were willing to do that to exercise their right to vote.”

A family of four went to vote at Bloemfontein High on Wednesday just before 07:00 and some of the people working there arrived at 07:15. When they got inside they were told the scanners weren’t working and they had to wait.

“They then decided to proceed with the printed-out manual voting system, but there were six of us, standing together, whose names were not on the list,” said the voter at Bayswater voting station.

‘One of the officials recognised us from the morning’

“They sent us to different stations to try and sort it out. Finally, we were sent back to the original station and had to go and wait in the back of the line again. One of the officials recognised us from the morning and took us to the front.

“They then wrote our names and ID numbers on a list and we voted.”

The top three political parties in the province at the moment are ANC at 52,36%, DA at 22,37%, and EFF at 12,45%. The number of spoilt votes is 1,24% out of 98,76% valid votes.

OFM News/Zenande Mpame mvh