South Africa's power cut affects vote counting

South Africa’s scheduled power outages have affected the pace of vote counting following the local elections that took place on Monday, local media are reporting.

The electoral body had hoped to have counted 90% of the votes by Tuesday night but only 58% had been counted by Wednesday morning.

The state electricity distributor Eskom, had announced that it would be implementing the power cut, or load shedding, from 1600 on Tuesday to 0500 on Wednesday.

South Africa’s electoral body, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) said that the power outage had disrupted the process of vote counting.

Its chief executive, Sy Mamabolo, is also quoted by state broadcaster SABC as saying that they were meeting Eskom officials to discuss the effect of the rolling blackouts on ballot counting.

This article originally appeared in BBC News.

Photo: AFP