Back to Africa Check

No evidence ballot boxes pre-filled with ANC votes ahead of South Africa’s local government elections

South Africa’s 2021 municipal elections were held on 1 November. At the time of writing the country was still eagerly awaiting the final results as the last votes were counted.

A number of social media users have claimed that in one voting district, boxes of filled-in ballots were delivered either before the election began, or on election day. 

Some Facebook posts have claimed that the ballot boxes contained votes for the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC).

Users on Facebook and Twitter shared photos of several ballot boxes. The photos were supposedly taken in Lebowakgomo, seat of the Lepele-Nkumpi municipality in the country’s northernmost province of Limpopo. 

The earliest photos of the ballot boxes were posted on 31 October, the day before the election.

But are these claims accurate?

Ballots_False

IEC investigation finds no fraud

South Africa’s Independent Elections Commission (IEC) is responsible for overseeing elections. They conducted an investigation after being alerted to these claims on Twitter. 

The IEC tweeted: “In this incident in Polokwane, Limpopo, one ballot box (bottom of pic) was not marked as it should have been. These boxes are traceable to their voting station.”

It seems that the IEC made a mistake in their tweet about the location of the incident. The marked ballot boxes in the photo are labelled “LIM355”, the voting district for Lepele-Nkumpi, not Polokwane, the capital of Limpopo province.

The IEC also said the ballots in the boxes could be linked to genuine votes and they “do not condone the failure to mark the ballot boxes correctly, but no fraud took place”.

It is not unusual that some ballots had been filled in and boxed by 31 October, a day before the official election day. Early “special votes” are granted ahead of time to some registered voters who cannot travel to their nearest voting station on the election day. 

The IEC warned voters “not to spread disinformation”.

Republish our content for free

Please complete this form to receive the HTML sharing code.

For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false

A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?

Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.

Publishers guide

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.

The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.

You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
limit: 600 characters

Want to keep reading our fact-checks?

We will never charge you for verified, reliable information. Help us keep it that way by supporting our work.

Become a newsletter subscriber

Support independent fact-checking in Africa.