By SIPHELELE DLUDLA
Pretoria – Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) chairman Dali Mpofu said on Thursday that his party would use to its advantage every vote it wins in the 2019 general elections.
This came as the EFF was still trailing from behind at number three with 660 687 votes nationally after the seven million votes, or 48.03 percent, tallied by the Electoral Commission for South Africa (IEC) at 15.40 pm on Thursday.
The African National Congress (ANC) continued to lead the pack with 3.9 million votes while the Democratic Alliance (DA) was second with 1.6 million.
The EFF has managed to use the six percent electoral support it garnered in 2014 to put on the national agenda hot button topics like land expropriation and the nationalisation of the SA Reserve Bank.
“From the beginning we were already doing better than 2014 because at the very first moment we have been gaining. We have already said that even if we gain one vote we will use it,” Mpofu said.
Mpofu said the EFF had not necessarily lodged any formal complaints or objections about reported widespread voting irregularities throughout the country, but said they were among the many concerned organisations.
“We are part of a group of parties that are concerned about the double voting. I think the other irregularities are normal, it’s a big election. But that issue of double voting is concerning because we don’t know the extent of the double voting,” he said.
Chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said on Thursday the IEC would conduct an audit of results and votes cast in a sample of voting stations to ascertain if double voting had occurred in the national elections.
Mpofu also added that this was a “very difficult time” for the EFF as party leader, commander in chief (CIC) Julius Malema, who is in mourning following the death of his grandmother.
“We don’t even know how we are going to handle these results because normally we would have a press conference here on Friday with out CIC, but that is now a day before the funeral. We will come back to you guys to say whether we will communicate or just issue a statement,” Mpofu said.
African News Agency (ANA)
