Durban - The number of spoilt of votes in KZN have dramatically increased to 44 246, a figure that is bigger than the number of voters who voted for the Minority Front, African Transformation Movement and African Christian Democratic Party combined.
This is also the highest number of spoilt votes in the country and the lowest number of votes that were spoilt are in the sparsely populated province of the Northern Cape where a mere 4984 of them became null and void.
According to the results posted by 2:20pm on Friday by the Independent Electoral Commission, 200 715 votes were spoilt at the national level. In the Eastern Cape, 26 065 votes were spoilt, Free State had 8 986, Gauteng had 23 648 and 14 063 votes were spoilt in Limpopo. In Mpumalanga, there were 16 975 while in North West there 15 822 spoilt votes. The Western Cape had 16 418.
While the IEC said it was not at liberty to know what was written on the spoilt votes as they only get a figure without details, the Economic Freedom Fighters in the province said it believes this was a form of a protest against the ruling party. The EFF's chairperson, Vusi Khoza, said it was not an issue of illiteracy on the party of the voters as many would like to believe.
"We don't believe that a high number of South Africans are still illiterate in terms of voting, they know exactly how to go about with voting, we think that are deliberate particularly in KwaZulu-Natal where there is high satisfaction about service delivery and voting came at a time when municipal workers here (eThekwini) are on strike and according to our assessment, its a protest against the ruling party," Khoza said.
The provincial secretary of the ANC, Mdumiseni Ntuli, said it was not true that all the spoilt vote was a protest against his party which is ruling the province.
"I don't think it's a protest vote against the ANC. The most effective way to protest against a party is to vote against it, not to spoil a ballot," he said while speaking to Independent Media at the results centre in Durban.