Cape Town - The IEC in the Western Cape says voting in the province started well, with no major glitches reported.
However, it warned that the rain could have an impact on the voting process.
Some of the structures used by the IEC were tents that could be affected by the rain.
Electoral officer in the Western Cape, Michael Hendrickse, said more than 1 500 voting stations opened on time except for a few.
However, voting was now under way, but the rain was threatening to have an impact on some of the work of the commission in the province.
Voters have braved the bad weather as they queued in some of the areas.
Hendrickse said out of the more than 1 500 voting stations, 35 of them were temporary structures. Most of these tents were in the Cape metro.
“All our stations are open and operational. There are some challenges that I need to indicate around temporary structures that we set up. In the province, we set up 35 temporary structures as voting stations, either because there were no permanent structures available or the permanent structures that were there were really booked out,” he said.
He said the issue of the rain was a factor. But they have called in their suppliers to reinforce permanent structures affected by the weather.
“The one impact that we have now experienced is the weather, and the rain is affecting our operations, especially our tents. We have had incidents where we had to call our suppliers, in two cases, to come and reinforce our tent structures. We want to assure voters that the IEC will do everything in its power to allow them to cast their ballot papers during the course of today,” he said.
He added that voting would continue until it was time to close the polling stations in the evening.
POLITICAL BUREAU