The Democratic Alliance and the African National Congress were neck and neck in the local government election race in the Western Cape with the Independent Democrats trailing in third place on Thursday morning.
While there were fears that outages might have delayed results from the hotly contested province, it was in fact the province that had the most vote counting done by 5am.
Five of the 24 municipalities already had provisional seat allocations and a further four had completed counting.
Province-wide, the DA had 422 994 votes cast in ward, proportional representation and district councils, against the ANC’s 404 340 and the ID’s 107 837.
In Matzikama (Vredendal), the ANC won control of the council with six seats against the ID’s four and the DA’s three.
In the Cedarberg (Citrusdal), the ANC won six seats, the DA four and the ID two.
In Bergrivier (Velddrif), the ANC and DA were tied with six seats each and the ID will hold the deciding vote with its one seat.
In Laingsburg, the Laingsburg Gemeenskap Party won two seats and the ANC and DA each won one seat.
In Prince Albert, the ANC won three seats and the DA two.
The battle in Beaufort West between former municipal manager Truman Prince and the ANC has ended in a draw.
Prince’s Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa and the ANC each won three wards and two proportional representation seats in the local municipal council, and two seats on the district council.
The balance of power in town will be in the hands of the DA and the ID, who won one proportional representation seat each. The DA won an additional seat on the district council.
A total of 23 217 votes were cast in the town.
Khutsong
Only 232 people voted for municipal ward candidates in the troubled Khutsong township in Merafong City on Wednesday.
This became apparent on Thursday when the township’s ward results were captured at the IEC’s results centre. Of the 232 votes, 12 were spoiled, meaning that only 220 votes out of a possible 29 540 came in.
All of the wards were won by African National Congress candidates, but in one ward it did so with only six votes against the Democratic Alliance’s one vote.
Counting was still going on in some of Merafong’s other wards.
Khutsong residents have protested, often violently, and vowed to boycott the election over the incorporation of their municipality into the North West from Gauteng.
Eastern Cape
A visit by DA leader Tony Leon to Baviaans (Willowmore) in the Eastern Cape last week seems to have paid off as the party provisionally won control of the municipal council.
The DA took three seats in the council, leaving the ANC with two seats.
Baviaans became one of the first municipalities to report to the Independent Electoral Commission results centre in Pretoria on Thursday after vote counting was finished.
The DA provisionally received 2 170 votes, narrowly beating the ANC, which got 2 136 votes and the Independent Democrats with 281 votes. Only the DA and ANC had enough votes to get seats on the council.
After the last election in 2000, the DA had three councillors in the Baviaans municipality and the ANC one, but in 2002 two councillors crossed the floor to the ANC.
Leon campaigned in the area last week, saying the DA was planning to win back the municipality, ”which the ANC stole from the voters through floor-crossing”.
Turnout
A lower voter turnout than in the previous local government election was predicted by party leaders who turned up to observe proceedings at the IEC results centre on Wednesday evening.
”It’s a bit disappointing,” said Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder, who was planning to spend the night at the election centre.
”I think we would be able to pick up voting patterns very early, and I’m very anxious to find out what it will show,” Mulder said.
Patricia de Lille, ID leader, who was also spending the night, said it was up to all parties to turn around what she termed a ”steep decline” in voter turnout.
”There can be voter apathy only 10 years after our first democratic election. In future, all parties would have to do more to get people to the polls,” she said.
DA chief whip Douglas Gibson said indications from DA personnel on the ground were that there were fewer voters in this year’s local government election compared with the last one in 2006.
”We are getting very mixed feedback at the moment,” Gibson said.
Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC secretary general, packed up just before midnight, saying it was far too early to make any predictions.
”I believe we will only get final results on Saturday,” he said. — Sapa