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00:00:00
Speaker 1: We go now to Guadalupe Natal, where our eyewitness news reporter, Tabiso Gorba, is joining us this afternoon. Tabiso, great to chat to you again. I understand KZN flying a bit of a flag for voter turnout. It looks like you've come in a little bit higher than the national average. Good afternoon.
00:00:15
Speaker 2: Good afternoon, yes. Voter turnout is just 49%. So that's obviously very good for Guadalupe Natal. I think there was about 6 million registered voters So 49%, you're probably looking at about 3 million people who were registered to vote that did turn up at the polls to vote. So ideally, the KZN would have liked to be over 50%, but you know, you take what you can get.
00:00:43
Speaker 1: Look, it's still a long way to go, Tabiso, but I know 26% of the KZN votes have been captured. And it's a very interesting and quite hotly contested top of the leaderboard. Do you want to run us through the picture of what's happening in your province?
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Well, I think the story today is definitely the Mkonto Isisor party. I mean, this is something we've obviously expected. I think, one, the Mkonto Isisor party has now won its first municipality outright. The Richmond local municipality here in KwaZulu-Natal, the MK party got an outright majority, winning 56% of that municipality. So that means they're going to be governing it alone, no coalitions, nothing whatsoever. But also another interesting thing is that Five councils, they've already finished counting five councils. And out of these five councils, the NK party is the leading party in four out of the five councils where counting has been completed. The other one party is the ISP. So a very, very big showing for the NK party. But we're still waiting on those big municipalities especially, obviously, where we currently are, Etigwini Municipality. We know that's the big one. That's the one that everyone wants here in KwaZulu-Natal.
00:02:06
Speaker 1: Etigwini previously, obviously, a hung council with the ANC on 42%, the DA 26% and the EFF 10.5%, if I'm remembering correctly. Looks or sounds like, I mean, if this trend continues like that, picture could change quite dramatically.
00:02:20
Speaker 2: It would change. I think the entire election map in KwaZulu-Natal has changed dramatically due to the emergence of the Om Kondo Isidro Party. I mean, we've spoken to the DA, the ANC, and even the MK Party itself. The picture that's emerging here in Itsegwini is that the MK Party is likely going to be the party with the most votes, however, it is not going to be getting a majority. And that is going to be very interesting because you remember that in 2024, in the provincial election, the NK party got the most votes in KZN. It got 45%, which was the most of any party. However, the other parties, the ANC, DA, IFP, and the NFP, they got to form the coalition that effectively pushed out the NK party, even though the NK party had a lot of votes. And I can tell you right now that just based on the conversations that we've had, I suspect a similar thing might also be brewing here in the Teguini way. The DA, the ANC, and those other political parties might just decide that they form a coalition party, regardless of the fact that the Omkonto is a party, might get the most votes in the Teguini way.
00:03:36
Speaker 1: Tabisa, anything else you'd like to flag that I haven't asked you about, whether it's to do with any issues or problems around voting, complaints being lodged, or particular results that are surprising or stunning?
00:03:49
Speaker 2: I think the one thing, you know, coming into this election period, KwaZulu-Natal was identified as one of the hotspot areas for election-related crimes. I think there was about 165 voting stations that were classified as high risk by the police. And I think what we've experienced over the last two days, we also had a media briefing with the KZN police, is that there hasn't been any incidents of any violence or anything that sort of disrupted the election process. Obviously, like any other part of the country, there were those isolated incidents of people fighting, of people, you know, of people fighting or people disrupting the election process through other means, but nothing major or nothing that we've seen in the run-up to these elections where we've seen cars being torched on the streets, people being killed on the streets, shops being looted and damaged. So it was a relatively peaceful election night, election day here in KZN.
00:04:52
Speaker 1: Good to hear it. Tabisa Gorba, thank you so much for the update. Speaking to us from the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands there. And yeah, the MK results, certainly the ones to keep an eye on. Again, it's very, very early days there. Only sort of a small number of the votes, percentage of the votes rather, captured 26%. and still a long way to go. But the parties at the top of the board, MK on 33% overall for the province, the IFP on 22% and the ANC on 25%. The next closest, as I take a look here, is the DA on 10%. Again, that's only with just over a quarter of the vote.