Midterm upsets weaken Trump: What it means for SA trade and diplomacy

The IEC. So, Masergo, let me start with the big picture then. Was yesterday's election an operational success or were there more problems perhaps than you had anticipated? On many matrices, we can say it was an operational success. However, our obligation is to offer a service to citizens. So, if there's a citizen that was unhappy with our service, we should be concerned and try to make it better the next time we interact with them.

But on the whole, yesterday was a culmination of two years of hard work and planning, and we're very happy with the effort that we placed at the disposal of citizens to exercise their rights in an environment relatively calm, characterized by professional service and functioning technology. Are you at this stage, Masero, able to tell me how many voting stations experienced any type of disruption?

As a result of that, how many voters might have been affected? It would be difficult to quantify the number of voters that may be affected because it could be the totality of everyone who's registered in that VD, including those that were not intent on participating. The majority of problems that we encountered this time around were as a result of inclement weather and not so much inability to plan, except in the city of Cape Town on the first day of the city.

of special voting where we had ballot paper distribution well late into the mid-morning. And the last station that we provided, we provided ballot papers at about three. So in those areas, there is a direct impact on the voters. In instances of inclement weather, especially for special vote, fortunately we had the second day to recover and make alternative arrangement. Thankfully to the state, we also got assistance where we needed.

Military choppers to ferry us across flooded rivers so that we could extend the right of franchise. And as far as you're concerned, are these isolated failures or do they point to perhaps weakness within your planning, procurement, and testing procedures? The procurement procedures, I think, those ones we are relatively good with. So even with the late distribution of ballots, it was not for want of planning. Our original plan had

A finishing date for ballot production and distribution as the 21st of October. But we all know that there was a court case that says include candidates that were not on the ballot. In that circumstance, we had had to reprint the three million ballots in a short space of a few days and have them ready for special voting days. That is what set us back on the logistics. On the other areas, we could improve planning with the