Tshwane - The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) will announce the results of the local government elections for the hotly-contested Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality on Thursday night.
“When will the results from metros be declared? For the Nelson Mandela Bay, it will be sometime during the course of this evening. For the other metros in Gauteng, it will be during the course of the day tomorrow [Friday],” IEC deputy chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo told reporters at the national results operations centre in Tshwane.
“The capturing process for the Nelson Mandela Bay metropolitan municipality is currently at 91.3 percent complete so we are working hard in that part of the world to declare that municipality sometime during the course of this evening. There are just 44 results slips that have to be captured, scanned and audited at that municipality.”
On a national scale, Mamabolo said the capturing process for the results slips was well under way and also nearing completion.
“Although we have captured 92.7 percent of the results slips, the ones which are complete after going through auditing as well scanning them into the system are 83.3 percent. This means we still have 10 496 results slips to process before we finalise the results capturing process which representing 16.7 percent,” said Mamabolo.
“Our projection is that by late evening we would have reached the completion rate of about 90 percent. That means about 90 percent of all results will be in and complete by late evening today [Thursday]. The balance of the results will come through during the course of the day tomorrow [Friday]. By early evening tomorrow, all results will be in the system.”
Regarding widespread reports of marked ballot papers discovered outside the IEC’s results operations centre in Port Elizabeth, Mamabolo said all was in order.
“Those ballots were where they ought to be. These ballots were in fact within our custody at the (provincial) results operations centre,” said Mamabolo.
African News Agency