Counting complete, but here’s why SA must wait until the weekend for the final results
Just over 30% of municipalities had confirmed their results, with its internal complaints portal recording roughly 1 000 incidents.
The South African Electoral Commission (IEC) is diligently reviewing every results slip to verify the outcomes of the 2026 local government elections. As of 7pm Thursday, the results portal indicated that 50% of the votes had been counted, with IEC Chair Mosotho Moepya sharing in a briefing that results for 65 out of the 213 municipalities had been confirmed.
Gauteng, Limpopo, and the North West provinces were lagging behind with 0%, 5%, and 11% confirmation rates, respectively. The Northern Cape had confirmed 21 out of 26 municipalities, while the Western Cape had tallied 14 of its 25. The IEC chair emphasized that the slow pace of result dissemination was merely procedural, as most counting was already complete.
Any ongoing counting would involve resolving issues and making decisions within the commission's framework. The IEC urged political parties, independent candidates, the media, and the public to exercise caution when interpreting partial results, stressing that only officially verified results would be presented on Sunday. The commission's issue tracker, accessible to officials and party representatives, had addressed over 1,000 complaints since Monday, while the media does not have access to this internal system.
Objections with valid reasoning must be submitted by Friday, and parties could not delay results by contesting them at the station or refusing to sign the results slip.
Written by urgent.news from The Citizen's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
