South Africa Elections Update: Results Reappear After Glitch
With almost 60% of polling stations results, a coalition is now the most likely outcome
South Africa Elections Update: Results Reappear After Glitch
Partial results from South Africa's parliamentary election reappared on the electoral commission's website on Friday after roughly two hours during which the results page went blank due to an apparent technical glitch.
When it came back up, the results page showed the governing African National Congress on 42.1% of the vote with results in from 54.9% of polling stations.
The opposition Democratic Alliance party was on 23.7%, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) on 10.8% and the Economic Freedom Fighters on 9.6%.
The webpage had been working seamlessly since the beginning of the count late on Wednesday, after the election took place, but the data disappeared at about 0500 GMT and reappeared shortly after 0700 GMT.
“The Electoral Commission confirms that it has experienced interruption in the replication of data from its national data centre and the various Results Operation Centres,” it said in a statement.
“The data in the data centre remains intact and the results have not been compromised. All services have since been restored and the leaderboard is working normally. Result processing continues unaffected.”
South Africa Elections Update: Results Reappear After Glitch
The count from more than 12,000 of the 23,000 polling stations raised the strong possibility that the ANC would need a coalition partner to form a government and reelect President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second and final term. The frenzied negotiations were likely set to start behind closed doors.
The ANC was still leading the count and had the most votes by some way, as expected, with the main opposition Democratic Alliance on around 24%. The ANC is widely expected to still be the biggest party and to have the most seats in Parliament.
The ANC’s support has steadily declined from a high of nearly 70% of the vote 20 years ago as South Africa grapples with deep socioeconomic problems, including widespread poverty and now one of the worst unemployment rates in the world at 32%.
Poverty and unemployment disproportionately affect South Africa’s Black majority that make up 80% of the population and were the core of the ANC’s support over the years.
