Free State ANC confident it will retain power as it leads vote counting
A total of 185,000 votes have been confirmed to have been counted in the province.
An African National Congress (ANC) flag flies outside a polling station in Langa, near Cape Town, on 1 November 2021. Picture: AFP
BLOEMFONTEIN - The African National Congress (ANC) in the Free State said that it was confident that it would retain power as it is currently leading with the highest number of votes thus far.
A total of 185,000 votes have been confirmed to have been counted in the province.
This is around 36% of the votes cast. However, this number may change as the capturing of counted votes continues.
The ANC said it ran a good campaign in the province, saying that results would show this.
The Free State is the ANC’s birth province, but due to service delivery issues and the emergence of new parties like the ACT and ACM, some feared this could hinder the ANC’s performance in these polls.
But its head of elections in the province, Saki Mokoane, said the ANC was in fact claiming some of its lost ground.
"The fact of the claim that we’ve claimed a number of wards, in particular we are set to claim about 2twowards that would been won by the other party is a significant indication that the organisation is recovering well and renewal is beginning to pay off."
He added that the party’s campaign was not threatened by other parties.
"We’ve never been worried about any other party, we have been focusing on the ANC, so that we can really get to achieve the set milestones. So, the results that you see on the dashboard are beginning to be a confirmation that we are on course to achieve the targets which we’ve set for ourselves."
Since Thursday morning, the ANC has been leading with the number of votes, followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).