Sources and About ZA94

How the numbers were chosen

Where a published national total and a party-by-party table exist, this site uses the table that adds up. The nineteen party totals on the results page sum to 19,533,498 valid votes. Adding the 193,112 spoilt ballots gives 19,726,610 ballots counted. Those are the figures in the compilation preserved by South African History Online and in the Election Resources tables, which rest on reports of the IEC’s Election Administration Directorate.

The provincial national-ballot votes for the ANC, the National Party and the IFP were checked the same way: the nine provincial figures for each party add back to that party’s national total. Legislature seats were checked by adding across provinces to the national provincial-ballot seat totals: 266, 82, 44, 14, 12, 3, 3 and 1.

A few reputable secondary accounts differ by a few dozen ballots, or they round a percentage and then mis-state a raw total. The South African History Online narrative, for example, drops a digit from the National Party’s vote in one sentence. The table is the safer citation. Where this site gives a percentage to two decimals, it is the published rounding, not a fresh calculation that might disagree in the second place.

Turnout is the exception. Because there was no voters’ roll, any percentage needs an estimated denominator. The 86.9 percent figure uses about 22.7 million. The O’Malley Archives put eligible adults nearer 21.7 million, and said about 16 million of them had never voted. Both sentences can be true as estimates. Neither is a register.

Photographs

The photographs were made for this site as illustrations of queues, polling stations, counting rooms, and landscapes. They are not archival photographs from April 1994. They do not depict real identifiable participants in the election, and they should not be captioned or republished as if they did. The flag in the header is drawn to the construction in the national flag specification, not generated as a picture.

Works this site relies on

Independent Electoral Commission historical table, “1994 National and Provincial Elections”, including the note that a temporary commission ran the 1994 poll. Published copy: elections.org.za.
South African History Online, compilation of the 26–29 April 1994 National Assembly result: election_results_1994.pdf. The narrative article on the same site is useful for context and is not the source of the raw totals, because one of its party figures is mistyped.
Manuel Álvarez-Rivera, Election Resources on the Internet, “Republic of South Africa 1994 General Election”, drawing on IEC Election Administration Directorate reports of 26 May 1994. electionresources.org/za/1994.
Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 200 of 1993, especially the electoral schedule: 200 regional seats and 200 national seats, the proposed regional split, and the quota. Assented to on 25 January 1994. In force 27 April 1994.
Inter-Parliamentary Union, South Africa, parliamentary election of 26–29 April 1994: final results announced on 6 May, and the seat totals.
O’Malley Archives, Nelson Mandela Foundation, “The 1994 Elections”, on the missing roll, temporary identity documents, and the two ballots. omalley.nelsonmandela.org.
Los Angeles Times, 29 April 1994, “Problems Force Extension of S. Africa Vote”, for Kriegler’s statement, the scale of the stations, and the areas where voting was extended. South African History Online’s dated entry for 28 April 1994 records the same extension.
Yale School of Management, case note on the 1994 election, for the 19 April agreement and the stickers added to printed ballots.
Andrew Reynolds, in the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network and the FairVote archive, and Arend Lijphart in the same archive, on the list system, the dropped threshold, and the proportionality of the result.
Rulers.org, provincial list, for the May 1994 premiers and the 28 June 1995 renamings of the Free State and Gauteng.

What this site does not do

It does not reproduce ballot images, candidate lists, or the full polling-station reconciliation. It does not try to settle, precinct by precinct, the accusations of fraud that were made in 1994. Scholars who worked inside the count, including Steven Friedman, have said the missing roll made verification difficult. International observers nonetheless described the election as substantially free and fair. Both points are part of the record.

If a figure on these pages disagrees with the IEC compilation linked above, the compilation wins. The pages were prepared on 2 October 2026.