Chaos at Durban ICC as ‘Missing Ballots’ and Recount Discrepancies Stall eThekwini Election Results
Counting for the 2026 Local Government Elections ground to a halt at the Durban International Convention Centre (ICC) results center as political parties demanded immediate interventions over severe data discrepancies, forcing the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) into emergency recounts.
According to ActionSA Mayoral Candidate Zwakele Mngcwango the friction escalated after an opened ballot box prompted a formal recount request from party agents.
Representatives from ActionSA expressed outrage after discovering that the digital results system had initially recorded 180 votes for the party in a specific voting district.
However, upon auditing and executing a physical recount, the actual number rose to 200 votes.
The find triggered immediate outcries of institutional bias and systematic rigging from smaller political organizations.
“Why are we being cheated just because we are a growing party?” asked Mngcwango, pointing to what they termed suspicious “habits” within the IEC’s local capturing pipelines.
The capturing of the broader eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality results has been officially delayed following a major deadlock in another unverified ward.
Party agents flagged an anomaly where the number of physical paper ballots inside a specific box completely failed to reconcile with the total numbers already logged into the IEC’s live system.
To the shock of opposition members present during the unsealing, the opened box only contained physical ballots cast for the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA).
Ballots belonging to all other contesting political entities were completely missing from the crate, despite being registered digitally.
Following a heated standoff on the floor, opposition parties collectively blocked the processing of the affected ward, demanding that election officials physically track down the missing paperwork.
“We told them they must look for the ballot papers of the other parties until they find them,” Mngcwango noted.
The IEC has officially paused the counting process for the disputed area to launch an internal search for the missing ballots.
Regional counting is expected to resume tomorrow morning once the paperwork has been recovered and verified by party agents.
The incident adds further strain to an already logistically challenged eThekwini count, which has been slowed down by high vote volumes and sequential disputes.
