By Karabo Ngoepe
Former South African President Jacob Zuma’s Mkhonto We Sizwe Party is poised to dislodge the ruling African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal.
By mid-morning on Thursday, the MK Party was leading in the province with over 1 million votes having been counted. The party’s Secretary General Sihle Ngubane said they were pleased by what they were seeing and that was in line with what they had projected at the beginning.
“We are very much encouraged by the numbers and they are predictive of what we spoke about,” he said.
Despite the numbers being shown, Ngubane lamented the actions of the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC). He said the organisation was not prepared for its arrival and feels their supporters were also denied the opportunity to vote.
“We are very disappointed by the gross misconduct of the IEC. We told the IEC that the 2024 elections are exactly like the 1994. There were long queues. There were VDs closed when people were still in the queue,” he said.
Ngubane added that the IEC failed to read the mood on the ground and properly prepare and ensure everyone’s rights were protected and citizens got to exercise their democratic rights.
“The IEC was supposed to be predictive. When President Zuma launched the party, there were a lot of people excited. They should have predicted that something big is coming. Our party agents were asking that they needed help because people wanted to vote. This was a chaotic election. I’m very disappointed with the IEC,” he said.
Political analyst Lukhona Mnguni said he was not surprised by the inroads made by the MK Party in KZN and even nationally.
“It’s not surprising but the extent of the race is surprising. I did six focus group researches in KZN and from that, I could tell the ANC is going to be in serious trouble. I remember people asking me if MK would cause an upset and I said they could even get about 500 000 votes which would translate to about 23% but it seems if they keep the momentum, they might surpass that by a huge margin in what we call a political massacre,” he said.
Mnguni added that from what the numbers show, MK has already secured its second seat in Parliament and that could increase as the tallies continue to trickle in.
“MK seems to be approaching its second seat in Parliament. We have an interesting election result on our hands,” Mnguni said.
He added that people will need to study what the party did to get its message across and attract so many people in its first elections. The last party to perform so exceptionally in its first election was the Congress of the People (Cope) in 2009.
“We will need to analyse the tactic MK was using to get its message across,” Mnguni said.
By 10 am, results had been obtained from 3 132 stations out of the 23 293 Voting Districts that saw South African cast their ballots. That translated to a 5 per cent of the total votes.
