SARAH BULLEN, Cape Town | Friday 9.00pm
THE Independent Electoral Commission admitted huge errors in its accounting of unverified results late on Friday night as results continued to swing like a pendulum over and then back again behind the mark of an African National Congress two thirds majority. Results late on Friday afternoon showed the African National Congress had passed the two-thirds share of the counted vote and the Inkatha Freedom Party had overtaken the Democratic Party for second spot.
Then the IEC withdrew more than one million votes from its latest count, apologising to political parties for the mistake.
Deputy chief electoral officer Norman du Plessis said a total of 863883 KwaZulu-Natal votes from one voting district had been mistakenly added to the total of the African National Congress, and another 281246 to the Inkatha Freedom Party.
The actual totals from the voting district had been 883 for the ANC and 246 for the IFP.
Results at 8.00pm uphold the DP’s position as the main opposition with 10,30% of the vote, with the IFP coming in at third place with 8,16%. Unverified tallies give the ANC 65,28% of the national vote, with verified figures at 63,66%.
IEC officials were now regretting their decision to release results which had not been cross-checked, even though it had warned that the figures should be treated with extreme caution, saying they were not final, but only an indication of voting trends.
Already on Friday afternoon seven opposition parties requested hard copies of the results of all 14650 polling stations countrywide, in order to have the count independently verified.
In a letter to IEC Brigalia Bam, the Freedom Front, Inkatha Freedom Party, Afrikaner Eenheidsbeweging, Federal Alliance, United Democratic Movement, Democratic Party, and New National Party said they are concerned about the manner in which results are being received and verified.
It looks increasingly unlikely that the final results will be released before Sunday. The IEC has the leeway of seven days to produce a final result.