IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo on Wednesday evening. (Jan Gerber/News24)

• The IEC will declare the election results “sometime over the weekend”.
• The Northern Cape’s results were all in, while KwaZulu-Natal was the furthest from done, with around 75% completed at 16:00 Friday.
• Track the latest results via our Elections Map.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) said it would declare the election results “sometime over the weekend”.

By Friday afternoon 16:00, the results from 71.76% of all voting stations have been captured.

“The Electoral Commission is pulling out all the stops to ensure the finalisation of the capturing and auditing of the results for the 2024 national and provincial elections and remains on course to complete this process imminently,” said IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo at a media briefing at the national Results Operations Centre (ROC).

He said counting at all voting stations is complete and they have all the results at their local offices.

“The process underway is capturing them on our system for tallying and seat allocation,” he said.

In the sparsely populated Northern Cape, all voting stations have been completed, while the hotly contested KwaZulu-Natal was furthest behind, at 75.37% with 3 749 of 4 974 voting districts completed.

The progress relating to the capturing of the results of the other provinces at 16:00 was as follows:

• Eastern Cape was at 92.13% with 4 485 of 4 868 voting districts completed.
• Free State was at 95.52% with 1 515 of 1 586 voting districts completed.
• Gauteng was at 75.33% with 2 107 of 2 797 voting districts completed.
• Mpumalanga was 91.94% with 1 665 of 1 811 voting districts completed.
• Northern Cape was at 100% with 730 of 730 voting districts completed.
• Limpopo was at 80.78% with 2 598 of 3 216 voting districts completed.
• North West was at 88.61% with 1 540 of 1 738 voting districts completed.
• Western Cape was at 88.99% with 1 399 of 1 572 voting districts completed.

In terms of the law, the IEC must declare the results within seven days of the voting day. They usually declare the results well before that date.

Initially, it was expected that they would do that on Saturday, but Sunday was also mooted. Mamabolo said they would declare the results “sometime over the weekend”.

Mamabolo also expressed the commission’s regret about the incident this morning when the leader boards at the results operation centres and our website could not display the results on Friday morning.

“We wish to emphasise that our system did not crash and no data was compromised. The commission went into the elections with a full IT plan, which includes a back-up and recovery in case it is needed. This situation has not arisen.

“The incident involved the activation of a necessary control not to display to leaderboards which is a feature of the result system. Result capturing and other result collation activities proceeded without interruption,” Mamabolo said.

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Meanwhile, the African Union Election Observation Mission, led by former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta released a preliminary statement on the elections.

“South Africans freely exercised their constitutional right to vote and voted peacefully,” states the report.

On Wednesday, the mission deployed 65 observers who visited 297 voting stations across all provinces of South Africa.

“The day was marked by long queues. While the day was generally calm and peaceful, observers reported isolated incidents around some voting stations, primarily due to long queues and slow processing. The delays could be attributed to additional long and third ballot, Voter Management Device (VMD) failures, and late openings at some voting places,” states the interim report.

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The report further noted that these were the seventh elections since the end of apartheid, and it “occurred amidst a renewed enthusiasm among South Africans to strengthen their democratic gains”.

“This election was notably competitive due to the emergence of several new political parties. Despite the peaceful and credible nature of the previous six elections, the 2024 elections were marked by a tense political environment, intensified by several litigations.

“The pre-election period saw heightened tensions and concerns over the potential misuse of social media for spreading fake news, disinformation, and misinformation, which could incite violence. Nevertheless, the elections proceeded without major incidents, maintaining a pattern of peaceful conduct.

“Despite the challenges and tensions, the 2024 elections were conducted peacefully, demonstrating the resilience of South Africa’s democratic processes.”

A final report will be released within two months.