ANC gallops ahead in early national vote count

Voting continued late into the night at some voting stations, including those in KwaZulu-Natal. 

The Independent Electoral Commission says it has seven days to announce the 2024 election results but it's hoping to do by Sunday. 

Newswatch is at the Results Operation Centre at the Durban ICC.  

The Independent Electoral Commission has captured the votes of seven polling stations so far. 

KwaZulu-Natal has over 4,000.

READ: South Africa counts votes with ANC majority on the line

The centre dubbed the ROC was a hive of activity as scores of officials rush around to capture and confirm the results coming through. 

A huge screen that sits in the middle of the centre that's constantly updating as fresh results stream in from polling stations across the country.

Over 27 million people registered to cast their ballots on Wednesday.

Vote counting started in the early hours of on Thursday morning.

So far, the IEC's reporting that over 47 thousand votes have been captured, that's about 0,94 percent of the ballot, 650 have already been identified as spoilt votes and 218 districts out of 23 000 have declared their results. 

ALSO READ: MK Party performing well in early KZN vote count

Nationally, the ANC has over 24 thousand votes, followed by the DA's nine thousand and the EFF's 3 600. 

In KZN, around 0,8 percent of the ballots have been captured. 

That's over 6,600 votes. 

The IEC says 98 percent of them are valid - the rest are spoilt.