IEC gets Janet, but no other love from MPS
Tthe National Assembly has recommended anti-apartheid struggle activist, one-time MP and longstanding public servant Janet Love for a vacancy in the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).
Love was roundly acknowledged for her anti-apartheid struggle contributions, her service as MP from 1994 to 1999, as a ministerial adviser and also in the South African Reserve Bank and the SA Human Rights Commission. From 2006 to 2018, she was director at the Legal Resources Centre.
First appointed as a part-time IEC commissioner in April 2016 by then president Jacob Zuma, Love became full-time elections commissioner in April 2018. Her seven-year term ended in April 2023, but with the National Assembly endorsement, Love returns to the IEC, although it wasn’t clear whether it is to take up the post of deputy chairperson again.
She beat former intelligence inspector-general Setlhomamaru Dintwe and public protector hopeful advocate Oliver Josie to the post in a list of eight recommendations from a shortlist of 12 interviewed by a panel headed by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.
Whereas Love was warmly spoken about, the IEC was not. All the political parties that spoke, except the ANC, pointed to the 2024 elections being a landmark poll since 1994 – and how the IEC had recently been flailing.
The IEC, in its report to MPS on the 2021 elections, had failed even to mention the issues with the new voter management devices, said DA MP Adrian Roos.
The Freedom Front Plus cautioned that South Africans were losing trust in elections, and IFP MP Magdalena Hlengwa highlighted the testiness of the 2024 elections.
The EFF abstained from the vote because of the IEC’S failure to attract youngsters to register – about 15 million potential voters are not registered – and called for more funding for voter education and registration.
The 2024 elections will be a testing ground, not just for the IEC, but also for South Africa’s constitutional democracy – and political life.