Dylan Bettencourt
With a quarter of the votes counted, the Democratic Alliance (DA) looks set to win the majority of the municipalities in the Western Cape.
They currently have 51.8% of the votes while the ANC got 18.9%. Patricia de Lille’s Good Party got 4.38% and the Freedom Front Plus 4.4%.
The DA has secured 28 wards so far with the ANC winning 11 wards.
The first set of results in the Western Cape province came in around midnight on Monday with IEC provincial electoral officer Michael Hendrickse saying that more results will begin coming in throughout Tuesday.
The Western Cape is known as a DA run province but the ANC have attempted to reclaim some municipalities in recent years, but early signs point to another DA landslide in the province.
The City of Cape Town is set to be won by the DA as well with the party having 63.03% of the tallied votes. The ANC has 9.12%.
The Western Cape along with the rest of South Africa suffered an extremely low turnout at the polls on Monday with only eight million people having voted by 5pm despite there being over 26 million individuals registered to vote.
Many believe a shortage of ballot papers may have contributed to the low turnout with Hendrickse saying although some polling stations did not have enough ballot papers, the issue was sorted out quickly.
“We also received complaints of not enough ballot papers,” he said.
“We can assure the public there were enough ballot papers at all our stations.”
Image source: @Mail&Guardian
