Zelt Marais voted for Mogamat Rashard Davids. The official results say Davids received zero votes at Marais’s polling station — his name struck through, a nought in the tally box. On Friday, the former Western Province Rugby Football Union president walked into the Claremont police station and opened a case of election fraud.
The incident at Savio Hall in Lansdowne, in Cape Town’s Ward 60, has now drawn in both police and a political party demanding a province-wide recount. IOL reported the story on Friday night.
One Vote, Zero Recorded
Marais told police he personally cast his ballot for the independent candidate at Savio Hall on Wednesday. When the results were tallied, Davids’s line showed nothing. The rest of the station’s results were emphatic: the Democratic Alliance led with 1,434 votes (53.89%), followed by Al Jama-ah with 467 (17.55%) and GOOD with 278 (10.45%), according to the IEC’s live results dashboard.
Marais is currently serving a 10-year ban from all rugby activities for breaching SA Rugby’s code of conduct. His complaint, however, rests on the electoral record, not his rugby past.
Sworn Words at Claremont
In a sworn affidavit, Marais wrote that he was “perturbed” by the election results. “Having regard to the election results and information subsequently available, I have reason to be concerned that my vote may not have been properly recorded, included or counted in the final results declared for the relevant voting station,” he wrote.
His demands of the Independent Electoral Commission were specific: investigate how votes were cast and counted at Savio Hall, compare the number of ballot papers issued with the number placed in the ballot boxes, and check the original result slips and reconciliation records meticulously. All voting station records and election materials, he insisted, must be preserved until his complaint is resolved.
Police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel FC van Wyk confirmed the case had been opened. The docket will be transferred to the Lansdowne police station for further investigation.
TRUTH Pushes for a Province-Wide Recount
The Truth and Solidarity Movement lodged a formal objection with both provincial and national IEC officials — and went further, demanding a recount across the entire Western Cape. Party leader Mehmet Vefa Dag said the incident has eroded the party’s trust in the results.
“Every South African voter has the right to have their vote counted correctly,” Dag asserted. “We therefore believe that the election results must be properly checked before they are accepted as final.”
Concerns echoed on social media. On X (formerly Twitter), @nospin_sa wrote: “So a candidate gets recorded as zero votes and we must just accept the screens? Check the signed slips at that hall first. The paper trail exists for exactly this reason.”
That is the central demand from TRUTH: that the IEC verify the results on its electronic system match the original, signed result slips from the voting and counting stations. “An election cannot enjoy public confidence simply because results have been announced,” Dag added. “The results must also be capable of being independently checked and verified.”
The Signed Slip at the Centre of It All
The unsigned question hanging over the case is simple: paper or pixels? The official count forms, signed by Savio Hall’s counting officer, June Franco, are the primary physical evidence. They show the line through Davids’s name and the zero. Marais and TRUTH say those slips must be reconciled with the digital data — a mismatch would point to a failure in either the data capture or the counting itself.
Pressure on the commission is mounting for a swift, transparent answer.
