By Lehlohonolo Lehana.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has announced that more than one million people registered to vote by the end of Saturday.

Political parties were out in full force in major cities country with President Cyril Ramaphosa in Tshwane leading the voter registration campaign for the ANC, while the EFF leader Julius Malema was also in Gauteng on Sunday.

DA leader John Steenhuisen was in Cape Town to urge voters to register, while the IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa was in KwaZulu-Natal.

In a statement IEC said, "At the close of day one of registration weekend, over a million registrations were recorded at our 23 296 voting stations. At 12h30 today, a total of 609 447 registration transactions had been recorded at voting stations."

The commission also recorded an all-time milestone of over 100 000 online registrations. Today, the figure of online registrations stands at 40 000, said the IEC.

The commission said it is seized with resolving some online registrations that gave a "pending" message.

"The 'pending' message is received by voters in instances where the ID image that they have uploaded cannot be read or recognised by the system or where an image other than an ID has been uploaded. We urge voters to take extra care and follow system prompts when uploading images of their ID," said the commission.

It applauded the thousands of South Africans who have gone online and visited registration stations to register, re-register or check their details.

"We urge those that have not done so to use the remaining hours of today to go out in their numbers to register."

Last month, IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said he had been in discussions with President Cyril Ramaphosa about setting a date between May and August 2024 for next year's vote.

Mamabolo said the National Assembly and the nine provincial legislatures' terms of office would conclude in the middle of May 2024. The seventh parliament of the democratic era must be elected within 90 days of that date.