PRETORIA - South Africans will have to wait a while before they know the final results of South Africa's fourth democratic elections, 2009.

Speaking at a media briefing held at the Events Centre in Pretoria, Advocate Pansy Tlakula , chief electoral officer for the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) said they are satisfied by the manner in which yesterday's elections were conducted.

However, she said only by late tomorrow or even a few days from today, will the complete election results be known.

By midday (Thursday), the IEC announced that 38% of voting districts nationally have been counted and audited. The 38% translates to 7 332 of the 19 734 voting districts nationally.Results from 12 402 voting districts were still outstanding. 

Explaining the results further, Adv Tlakula said it should be clearly known that the IEC has 19 726 voting districts, of which one did not have registered voters and so no-one voted.

Nine additional voting districts were created to capture the votes that were cast overseas, hence the 19 734 voting districts nationally, she said.

Adv Tlakula said voter counts ran into the early hours of Thursday morning, but the IEC had counting officials who were allocated to al voting stations to count the votes and relieve the staff who have been on duty since the opening of the voting stations on Wednesday morning.

Asked about the longs queues at the voting stations, she said it was mainly caused by the fact that many voters turned up early in the morning when the voting stations were opened. The IEC voting system used to verify a person's presence on the voter's roll is very slow and as a result it takes longer for that process to be completed before the individual can be allowed to proceed to go ahead and cast their vote.

She mentioned that although the IEC is allocated a budget for the elections, that budget is not enough to allow it to buy a lot of advanced technology tools to speed up the process.

For example, she said each voting station was given one of these sophisticated tools to enhance the voter checking system, but with the huge turnout of voters at each station, delays were inevitable. Another reason blamed for long queues was the fact that voters changed voting stations at the last minute and the process of verifying their registration before they could be allowed to vote was a lengthy one.

The shortage of ballot papers also caused delays in many voting stations by afternoon on Wednesday, she said.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter