(29 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Eshowe, South Africa – 29 May 2024
1. Wide of polling station counting officers counting used and leftover ballots for verification
2. Various of polling station counting officers counting used and leftover ballots and noting numbers down
3. Wide of presiding officer looking over officers counting leftover and used ballots
4. SOUNDBITE (Zulu) Nombuyiselo Biyela, polling station Presiding Officer:
“We opened at 7 a.m. and everything went very well. We didn’t have any problems throughout the day, at all. With the exception, perhaps, that there were some people who couldn’t cast their vote because they were not registered here. Others had failed to complete a Section 24A (which allows a voter to vote outside their district). That was our biggest problem.”
5. Nombuyiselo Biyela, polling station Presiding Officer, giving the station’s counting officers instructions
6. SOUNDBITE (Zulu) Nombuyiselo Biyela, polling station Presiding Officer:
“We are ready to start counting. We can’t really say how long that will take but by our estimation, it shouldn’t take too long because we kept records of our stats throughout the day. Now it will be for us to see how the process goes because we don’t know if we have any spoilt ballots or not. So, we’ll have to wait and see how long it will take.”
7. Biyela cutting string off sealed ballot box
8. Biyela opening and tipping over the ballot box
9. Wide of polling station staff standing over ballots on the floor as they count votes on side
10. Officer shuffling through ballot papers on floor as counting gets underway
STORYLINE:
Counting began after South Africans voted Wednesday in an election seen as their country’s most important since apartheid ended 30 years ago.
The election was held on one day and polls closed after 14 hours of voting at more than 23,000 stations across South Africa’s nine provinces.
Officials were gearing up for counting but the final results are not expected for days.
The independent electoral commission that runs the election said they would be announced by Sunday.
At stake is the three-decade dominance of the African National Congress party, which led South Africa out of apartheid’s brutal white minority rule and to democracy in 1994.
The party is now the target of a new generation of discontent in a country of 62 million people — half of whom are estimated to be living in poverty.
After winning six successive national elections, several opinion polls have put the ANC’s support at less than 50% before this vote, an unprecedented drop.
It might lose its majority in Parliament for the first time, although it’s widely expected to hold the most seats.
AP video shot by: Sebabatso Mosamo
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