South Africans living abroad got the opportunity to cast their votes on Wednesday, with voters turning up in droves in large cities.

By late Wednesday evening staff at the South African embassy in London were still dealing with a steady stream of voters coming in to cast their ballots, said embassy spokesperson Niall Wilkins.

"There has been a consistent stream [of voters] all day," he said.

"It's gone very well, they all know they are a part of a special democratic process."

Wilkins said South Africans had started queuing around 4am in the city, which had the largest polling station of the elections, with a total of 7427 voters registered to vote there.

However, in New York, there were complaints.

According to Petra Nortje, one of two Democratic Alliance members monitoring voting at the South African consulate in Manhattan, more people would have turned out for the election if they had known they could vote.

Several people who were at the consulate to collect passports were disappointed that they did not know they could vote, she said.

Nortje, who lives in New Jersey, said that unless South Africans were members of a group like the local Springbok Club, which gathered regularly and disseminated news about South African events, it was unlikely they would have known they could participate.

Consul General Fikile Magubane said voting in New York had gone smoothly, with about thirty staff members at tables and booths since 5am.

A long journey to vote

Magubane said around 385 people were on the list to vote at the consulate, coming from New York and the adjoining states of Connecticut and New Jersey.

South African voters in the United States could also vote in Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Adam Barnes, who is studying on the Caribbean island of Grenada, flew to New York to vote as well as to be a monitor for the DA. The DA and the ANC each had two observers in the New York consulate.

"We are not here to talk to voters... just [to] make sure that everything goes properly," he said.

At least two registered voters were not allowed to vote because they did not have their identity documents, while several others raised objections about not being allowed to cast provincial votes.

"But the IEC had specified that there would be no provincial voting overseas," said Nortje.

South Africans living across the globe were awarded the right to participate in the 2009 election after a Constitutional Court ruling last month.

Some 16 240 voters intended casting their votes at the 124 South African missions abroad.

The second largest overseas polling station was in Canberra, Australia, with 1235 registered voters, then Dubai in the United Arab Emirates with 900 registered and Wellington, New Zealand with 410.

Voting in the UAE

Agnes Nyamande-Pitso, Consul General in the UAE, said a constant stream of South Africans had come in to vote since the polling station opened at 7am.

Nyamande-Pitso said the Consulate in the Gulf city conducted an information programme in order to alert South Africans about their right to participate in the elections.

There was an electoral commissioner at the embassy where the ballots would be cast. The station was being manned by foreign affairs and other staffers, she said.

An observer from the DA was also present at the embassy.

"It's going very smoothly, we haven't had any problems yet," she said.

A South African living and working in Dubai, Elizabeth Elphick, said while she and many South Africans she worked with knew they would be able to cast their ballots, the process was rather complicated.

"Not one South African here registered to vote... it was too last minute and some were not too sure how to do it, it was all a bit complicated," she said.

ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte said the party had not received much feedback from its party agents abroad accept for an agent in London.

"According to him [the party agent], things were going smoothly and the IEC had done a good job and we felt very good about that," she said.

The voting process

FF Plus leader Pieter Mulder said the "bureaucratic red-tape" involved when voting abroad could be reduced.

The party, which largely drove the court battle to give expatriates the vote in future, however, thanked South Africans who had gone to the trouble and had the patience to cast their votes despite this.

The smallest voting stations were Asmara (Eritrea), Suva (Fiji), Ramallah (Palestine), Bujumbura (Burundi) and Trinidad & Tobago (Port of Spain) — each having only one registered voter.

To ensure both the secrecy and legitimacy of overseas votes, the IEC had set up a two-envelope system.

Once a voter at an overseas mission has cast their vote in secret it is placed in an unmarked envelope and sealed. This unmarked envelope is placed in another envelope with the voter's name, ID number and voter district number.

These envelopes are then placed in a ballot box which is sealed.

When it is opened on election day, the details on the marked envelope are checked against the voters' roll and if there is no irregularity, the unmarked envelope is placed in the ballot box.

This ensures the vote is anonymous when the ballot is counted.

Sapa

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