With just over three million votes counted at 9am today, two new parties, already featuring in the top 10, have expressed delight at their performance.
New kids on the block, the GOOD party and the African Transformation Movement (ATM), were at the time of publication, seventh and tenth on the leader board, respectively. With 25.66% of counted votes in, the ANC led with 55.04%, followed by the DA (26.04%) and the EFF with 8.23%.
ATM President Vuyo Zungula was confident the party would improve from its current 0.44% (13 845).
“Close to 18 million voted, I think the valid votes that have been counted thus far is like 2.7 million. That tells you that 15 million votes still need to be counted,” he said.
“As the ATM, we are very confident that out of the 15 million votes that are still to be counted, we will get a huge chunk of those votes. Our party agents have been communicating with us and telling us about our performance all over the country.”
He said the party did not have any projections of where it expected to be at the various points of voting.
“We did not have any expectations because most of the voting stations are in urban areas where there is a low voter turnout but in the areas where there is a high voter turnout in rural areas, and that’s where we’ll get a huge chunk of votes,” he said.
Sam Shabane, GOOD’s Gauteng provincial coordinator, said the party was satisfied with where the party was by just after 8am when SAnews spoke to him on Thursday.
“We are in position seven, which is in the top 10. That pleases us because it tells us people responded very well to the message of ‘let us join hands, let us come (together) as good South Africans to fix South Africa; to build a foundation where each and every person in this country will have justice and enjoy living in this country,” he said.
The results, he said, were showing that the seven month old party was growing.
“We can only achieve better results from where we are. For us to be in the top 10, it is amazing. We were not expecting anything but just hoping to do better than the other parties,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
