Only four Western Cape districts outstanding

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Pretoria - With only four districts in the Western Cape yet to be counted, it appears the Democratic Alliance is set to win the province.

According to information at the Results Operation Centre in Pretoria, where votes in the 2009 General Election are being counted, the DA is leading with 563 051 votes or by 49.17 percent.

The province is hotly contested between the DA and the African National Congress.

DA leader Helen Zille said her party had proven wrong analysts who predicted the party would only get about 10 percent of the votes in the province.

"We ran a very targeted campaign in the Western Cape. This indicates that voters understand democracy."

The African National Congress has, whoever, won Robben Island where former ANC struggle veterans and heroes, including former President Nelson Mandela, were detained during apartheid.

Nationally, Ms Zille indicated that her party was hoping to gain 15 percent of the votes which would translate into a 30 percent increase from the last elections.

The DA is currently behind the ANC with the number of votes received, with 32.24 percent.

Third on the board is the Congress of the People with 8.57 percent and the Independent Democrats have 5.67 percent.

The DA also received a high number of votes from international voters - out of the 9857 votes cast, 7581 voters put their mark next the party's name.

Meanwhile, in KwaZulu-Natal is has been a "calm day", despite the province being identified as a hotspot in the days leading up to the election

Provincial electoral officer Mawethu Mosery said: "It has been a quiet and calm day."

"So far 66 percent of the votes have been captured," he said, adding that 4.4 million people had cast their votes in the province.

Mr Mosery said he said the capturing of votes in the province was likely to be completed by Friday.

Gauteng IEC electoral officer Simon Mamabolo said two million of the votes in the province have been captured.

"Two million votes have been declared, though the capturing process has been slow because of the auditing process we are trying to unblock this," said Mr Mamabolo.

He said 590 districts were still to be completed. Gauteng has the largest number of registered voters at 5.5 million.