Voters during the South Africa general election on May 29, 2024 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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Live updates of partial results from South Africa's parliamentary elections reappeared on the Electoral Commission website after at least a two-hour outage.
The prints are being closely watched amid early indications that the ruling African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's liberation party, could lose its parliamentary majority for the first time in the 30 years since the country took control.
According to CNBC monitoring, the election commission portal was briefly empty at 6:08 a.m. London time, but results were displayed again in London at 8:23 a.m.
The committee did not immediately respond to a request from CNBC for comment on the pause in updates. Reuters reported that the disruption was due to a technical problem that technicians at the results center in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, were working on.
Once the portal was back online, the data showed support for the ANC with 41.86% out of 55.63% of the vote, with the Democratic Alliance (DA) at 23.67%, and the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) at 19.98%.
An end result close to the current provisional 42% would mark a steep drop for the ANC, which last received 57.5% of support in the 2019 elections. It would also prompt incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa to begin negotiations for a coalition government, fueling political uncertainty that could dent the country's economic prospects.
