Supporters of the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) party gather outside the polling station at Ntlwane Primary School in the rural town of Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, on May 29, 2024. (Photo by Per Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
The Umkhonto we Sizwe party is calling for a recount of votes cast in Wednesday's election, alleging electoral fraud to prevent it from winning a majority in KwaZulu-Natal.
The party is also calling for a national and Western Cape recount and has warned that it will not accept the results unless its concerns are resolved by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).
This was despite the fact that numerous observers who were on-site during the voting process expressed satisfaction that the elections were conducted freely and fairly.
With 97% of the votes counted and the party's support at 14.82% nationwide and 45.9% in KwaZulu-Natal, the party held a press conference on Friday night, just hours after the deadline for objections, to announce that it would not accept the results unless a recount was held.
Current projected figures mean the MK party will be the largest in the province and take power from the ANC, but will not get the magic 50% plus one vote needed to rule KwaZulu-Natal on its own.
The party's national spokesperson, Nhlamulo Ndlela, said it had raised “several concerns” with the IEC about “serious irregularities” in the counting process.
Ndlela said he had raised the issue with the IEC but had not received a “satisfactory response” to his concerns.
The minutes compiled by the chairpersons “were not in line with those submitted and recorded by the party's agents,” Ndlela said.
“There are fundamental problems with their actions and their process. There are a lot of inconsistencies and we're going to find out what they are,” he said. “We're not satisfied.”
Ndlela said the party was considering filing a complaint with the Electoral Tribunal but was raising the issue publicly because it wanted scrutiny of the vote counting process.
“It is important to raise this issue now because we are in a very volatile environment and the MK party cannot be involved in anything that arises from that,” Ndlela said.
“We call on our members not to commit any acts of violence. We will continue our peaceful protests but we are voicing these concerns and demanding a recount.”
At the time of writing, the IEC had not responded to Ndhlela's comments.
He said he was aware of MK party leader Jacob Zuma's decision to contest the counting process and reject the results unless a recount was held.
In the Western Cape, where the DA maintained its majority with 53% of the vote, several smaller parties wrote to the IEC requesting a manual recount of votes cast in the province.
The appeals period ended at 9pm on Friday, by which point the IEC said it had received 36 appeals.
Build One South Africa leader Mmusi Maimane told media at the ROC on Saturday that his party would not contest the election results.
Maimane said it was time for political parties to get to work and commit to forming a government.
The Good Party's Brett Herron said he had applied for leave to lodge a belated challenge to discrepancies between the precinct figures and the figures ultimately shown by the IEC.
