The South African Police Service (Saps) has opened a case of intimidation following an attempted unauthorised entry at the Electoral Commission of South Africa's (IEC’s) warehouse in Booysens.

The IEC confirmed the incident occurred on Tuesday, also confirming that nothing was taken from the warehouse.

The IEC expands its footprint of storage sites ahead of each election to ensure storage of electoral supplies as close as possible to points of use.

Following the end of the elections, the local storage sites are rationalised and material is rolled back for storage and safekeeping at a centralised facility.

“During such roll back of material from a local storage site in the inner city, in the City of Johannesburg, a group of persons interfered with the handling of materials and subsequently followed a truck used to transport the material back to the provincial warehouse,” the IEC said.

The Saps confirmed that a case had been registered and it was investigating it.

“The Saps is investigating a case of intimidation after a group of 15 people presented themselves at the IEC offices at the warehouse, demanding entry to the warehouse, access to the ballot papers, where they were saying they wanted to ensure that all ballot paper had been counted,” said the Saps.

The Saps said it was studying all footage at its disposal to apprehend those behind this incident.