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Election observer and civil society organisation Ground Work Collective says that it would be ideal for votes cast overseas to be counted where the voting took place as a lot could happen during the transportation back to South Africa for counting.

This comes after IEC Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Masego Shiburi said that the ballots cast overseas would be transported back to South Africa and be counted at the IEC Results Operations Centre at Gallagher in Midrand.

Today marked the first day of voting by South African citizens living abroad.

Mbali Ntuli is the founder and CEO of Ground Work Collective.

“I can’t speak to whether having electronic voting would have been better given what we’ve seen, the discrepancies in other nations where they’ve been able to hijack devices. I think it’s always safest to be able to do it manually, but I would agree though is that it should be counted manually there, instead of being transported because so much can happen in between that particular situation when they leave and trying to come to South Africa. But as it stands, what we can do is our job as observers, just to make sure that the entire process is done with integrity and respect for our democracy, even for those that are abroad.”