The African National Congress (ANC) led by South African incumbent President Thabo Mbeki is headed for another comfortable election victory, according to the latest results on Thursday morning.

Independent Electoral Commission's National Results Operations Center announced that the latest results showed that the ANC led with 48,668 votes, followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) with 18,214 votes and the New National Party with 2,472 votes.

This was however a minute sample of the votes cast by the 20.6 million people aged 18 and over who had registered to vote on Wednesday.

Thabo Mbeki, who stands for the second term in office, is among8000 candidates from 37 political parties contesting across the country for more than 800 seats in the national and provincial parliaments.

South Africa's third democratic election appears to have gone off smoothly with few major incidents.

Voting was marred at three polling stations by bomb scares -- in Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Durban -- all of which proved to behoaxes.

The Pretoria North police station, doubling as a polling station, was evacuated when it received a bomb threat from an anonymous caller just after 6 pm, Wednesday. Nothing was found.

Shortly after voting started at the Durban City Hall, police received information of a bomb in the building, Durban police reported.

People were escorted out of the building and the area was cordoned off, but again, nothing was found.

In the third incident, security was stepped up around Gauteng provincial elections results center following reports of a bomb scare.

Members of the bomb disposal and dog units of the South AfricanPolice Service rushed to the center on Wednesday morning when claims of a bomb surfaced, but nothing was found.

Source: Xinhua