SOUTH AFRICA: Power cuts take toll on vote count

By: Ollus Ndomu

South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission –IEC- has failed to release consolidated results 72 hours after South Africans cast ballots in the local government elections on Monday.

Local media say the vote count has been slowed by scheduled power outages with the IEC confirming that only 58% of the votes had been counted by Wednesday morning.

The electoral body, which had hoped to have counted an estimate of 90% of votes by Tuesday night, told local journalists that blackouts had heavily affected the vote count process.

SABC, the stated owned broadcaster quoted IEC executive chief, Sy Mamabolo, saying his team was meeting the power utility company, Eskom, to possibly discuss adjustments to the load shedding schedule.

Earlier this week, Eskom had released a power cut schedule which would run from 16:00 on Tuesday to 05:00 on Wednesday.