Partial results from South Africa's parliamentary election reappared on the electoral commission's website on Friday after roughly two hours during which the results page went blank due to an apparent technical glitch.

When it came back up, the results page showed the governing African National Congress on 42.1% of the vote with results in from 54.9% of polling stations.

The opposition Democratic Alliance party was on 23.7%, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) on 10.8% and the Economic Freedom Fighters on 9.6%.

The webpage had been working seamlessly since the beginning of the count late on Wednesday, after the election took place, but the data disappeared at about 07:00 am (0500 GMT) and reappeared shortly after 09:00 am (0700 GMT).

"The Electoral Commission confirms that it has experienced interruption in the replication of data from its national data centre and the various Results Operation Centres," it said in a statement.

"The data in the data centre remains intact and the results have not been compromised. All services have since been restored and the leaderboard is working normally. Result processing continues unaffected."