South Africa elections results live: Count under way after contested poll
- Vote count began shortly after polls closed, in some cities long after the planned 9pm (19:00 GMT) Wednesday deadline.
- Final results not expected to be announced before Sunday.
Who is Julius Malema?
South Africa’s Julius Malema, who quit the ANC to form EFF, could potentially become a kingmaker or even deputy president if the ANC loses its majority as early election results suggest.
EFF is an anti-establishment, Marxist, Pan-Africanist party that keeps a sharp focus on the rights of Black South Africans and accuses the ANC of failing to cater to that core population.
Malema is particularly controversial for his radical, at times violent, political statements and for pushing policies seeking to redistribute land owned by the white minority to Black people or convert lucrative privately owned mines to government property.
The 43-year-old was the ANC’s Youth League leader in 2008, a position that made him popular nationwide. He was once a Zuma ally, but he was expelled from the ANC in 2012 after he fell out with the then-president and other party members. He went on to create the EFF the next year.
Election to be contested in urban areas
Tessa Dooms, director of the Rivonia Circle think-tank in Johannesburg, said the early results were skewed towards rural areas where she would have expected the ANC to be performing better than it was.
“The rural vote comes in early and it’s always much smaller. The urban vote comes in quite late. I think this election will be a lot more contested in the urban areas,” she told Reuters at the results centre in Midrand, north of Johannesburg.
