The website of South Africa’s electoral commission was down on Friday as the country counted votes from a key election in which the ruling ANC looked set to lose its majority.
The site which was down for nearly 2 hours was confirmed by in a terse statement.
“We apologise for the issue with our public-facing NPE system, and are working on restoring service.
“The results system is still operational and local offices continue to capture results”, the commission said.
The site was later restored after 2 hours.
Before it went down, African National Congress (ANC) was leading but with a score of only 42 percent – well below the 57 percent it won in 2019.
The centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) followed on 25 percent. The leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and former South African president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) were neck and neck on around nine percent each.
When it came back up, the results page showed the governing ANC on 42.1% of the vote with results in from 54.9% of polling stations.
The opposition Democratic Alliance party was on 23.7%, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) on 10.8% and the Economic Freedom Fighters on 9.6%.
The final results are expected in the next three days.
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