Voting stations will close at 9pm despite long queues still plaguing many polling stations, the Independent Electoral Commission said on Wednesday night.

"All stations are closing at 9pm, however all voters who will be in the queue at the time will be allowed to vote," said IEC commissioner Terry Tselane.

He said presiding officers had "scrambled" to supply some stations suffering from shortages with voting material.

"As South Africa's fourth election draws to a close this evening, voters flocked to the polls causing long queues and shortage(s) of voting material in some districts and voting stations," Tselane said.

The briefing at the IEC results centre in Pretoria came after an outcry from political parties for the time to be extended. This was after reports that some stations were without ballot papers.

"The shortage of ballot boxes and papers was caused mainly by the provision in the Electoral Act that allows voters to vote at voting stations other than the ones where they are registered.

"This also resulted in long queues."

Tselane said the IEC was pleased to say that with the cooperation of political parties most of the problems had been resolved by redistributing ballot papers to areas where they were needed most.

He added counting would also get underway at each voting station "immediately" after 9pm.

Tselane also urged against a tendency towards exaggeration.

He said that, after hearing reports of shortages in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, he had decided to investigate himself.

"I decided to go to Diepsloot and everything was fine. Not even a single presiding officer said to me there was a shortage of ballot papers.

"If you went to a voting station you would have noticed we did not have the kind of a problem some people said."