WRAP | Several politicians express gratitude as election results come in

As voting results continue to trickle in, several politicians have expressed their gratitude to voters. 

With more than half the votes counted at the time of publishing this article, politicians thanked citizens for casting their votes on Monday. 

According to the Electoral Commission (IEC), 58% of the 64,504 results expected had been finalised by Wednesday morning.

Of the 213 councils, 110 have not yet been counted. 

Here is what politicians had to say.

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba

“I want to say I love you my fellow South Africans. We have a long road ahead of us, but we are on the right path. Thank you for supporting us. We are so excited to bring ActionSA to your province,”

EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi

“Today, because of the EFF, it is possible to say SA has passed the stage of being a one party dominated state. It is impossible to imagine this reality without the EFF. It took only eight years to put the titanic, historic and oldest liberation movement in Africa below 50%.”

African Transformation Movement’s Mzwanele Manyi

“The ATM may not have achieved what it had set out to achieve, but unlike others, the ATM has not lost anything. You can’t lose what you never had. Well done ATM. It’s still early days but the ATM is now on the map.”

FF+ leader Pieter Groenewald

“Before 2019 the Freedom Front Plus had no ward councillors, only proportional representation councillors, and this is the beginning of some big things to come.

“I said at the beginning of this election that we are entering the new era of politics that they call coalition governments, and if you look at the results we are going to have many, many municipalities that will be governed by a coalition.”

DA leader John Steenhuisen

“People who’ve written the DA off saying we are going to get 16% or 19% are going to be disappointed. 

“We have been a lot more certain about who we are in these elections and a lot of voters have seen that. A lot of people walked away from the DA in the last election because they didn’t know who we are.” 

ANC election head Fikile Mbalula

“We love what we see on the screen for the ANC.

“It is still early days but we’re confident we will retain most wards in the country despite lower voter turnout. It was an epic and very difficult election to execute and we did that in a short space of time. It was frightening thinking the low voter turnout will affect us badly, but it is clear we are making new inroads, retaining most of our wards.”