By Zukile Majova & Doreen Mokgolo
The Umkhonto Wesizwe party led by former president Jacob Zuma has called on the IEC not to declare the election results as planned on Sunday.
The party claims to have evidence of vote rigging from various regions and in different provinces.
“If that happens (the results announcement) people will be provoking us. Don’t start trouble where there’s no trouble.”
The MK party is one of 26 political parties that have raised complaints about the elections.
Zuma claimed the technical glitch that resulted in the crashing of the IEC results dashboard on Friday was a deliberate interference, not a system crash.
He said they had evidence that during that two-hour blackout, there was vote rigging being enabled by the IEC.
“Some say machines crashed. No machine crashed. Wrong things were being done on the machines,” said Zuma.
“I hope whoever is responsible hears what we are saying… don’t start trouble where there is no trouble. Give political parties, which I think are a majority, a chance to present their cases, information and everything. Don’t rush us.”
Because of these allegations against the IEC, the MK party has called for a commission of inquiry into how the IEC ran the elections and the counting process.
The party said the first prize would be to rerun the elections.
“There’s a tendency in this country just to ignore serious matters,” Zuma said. “There are people who get arrested even if they’ve done nothing but there are people who commit serious crimes and nothing happens to them. Judges will say there’s nothing wrong.”
MK party spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela said they suspected something was wrong with the IEC from the very beginning.
“When we raised concerns about how the IEC appointed certain entities and that was a form of invoking the PAIA Act and the IEC never responded to that… They were mute.
“We briefed our president, commander-in-chief Zuma about the IEC discrepancies and concluded that we are seeking a recount.”
The IEC said it has received 579 objections so far.
Pictured Above: Umkhonto Wesizwe leader Jacob Zuma arriving at the National Results Centre on Saturday night.
Image Source: Doreen Mokgolo
