‘Let’s do it,’ said the IEC, and we did
Celebrating the country’s first free democratic election
THERE was no roll, and only a “guess-timate” of 22.7 million voters, when the country went to the polls for the first time in April 1994.
One of the endearing stories concerns Oom Daantjie Snyders of Mier, a speck of a hamlet on the edge of the Kalahari desert, near Namibia’s border.
Snyders was a democrat, but not a rash man; having seen the news, and footage of those snaking lines of patient voters across the country, some stretching for kilometres, he had no intention of languishing needlessly in a polling booth queue. Fortunately, as South Africa’s historic poll was spread over several days, Snyders had his options.
“I didn’t want to vote on Wednesday,” he said, “because I wanted to avoid the rush.”
His precaution, it turned out, was excessive – Snyders’ vote brought the grand total for Mier to 10. Those 10 votes, though, formed part of an inaugural democratic enterprise that was mind-boggling in scale, and daunting in its logistical and political implications.
The country’s last general election five years earlier – itself the precursor of things to come, given that it affirmed FW de Klerk’s role as a key figure in the transition – drew around 2.5 million votes.
The 1994 contest attracted no fewer than 19.5 million.
There was a ring of comforting bravado to the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) chipper promise – “You’re ready, we’re ready, let’s do it” – but it didn’t take much imagination to recognise the challenge.
No-nonsense Judge Johann Kriegler, the man given the job of making it happen, had been told it would be impossible to organise an election of this scale in less than a year, and that, preferably, two years was needed. With a hastily employed staff of 200 000, the IEC made it happen – had to make it happen – in just four months.
There was no voters’ roll, so nobody knew how many there were. The IEC worked to a rough estimate of 22.7 million eligible voters, and churned out 80 million ballots papers for delivery to about 9000 polling stations, some so remote they couldn’t be reached by road.
And, of course, there were problems: ballot papers running out; polling stations failing to open; long delays. That was one thing. What is perhaps forgotten today is that not everybody was keen to see the election proceed, never mind succeed – and it was by no means obvious, then, how serious a threat the last-gasp reaction of a desperate white right posed.
Though the bombing campaign across the country exacted a tragically pointless toll, it soon became clear not only that the violence was the work of a peripheral minority, but also that none of that mattered any more.
The country was already living its future, and nothing would deflect it.
The serpentine queues of patient voters were eloquent. It has been written elsewhere that “by the time they voted, many had waited for hours; most had waited a lifetime”.
None had any difficulty understanding what it meant to have a vote, and use it. And it worked. As the story of April 30 – with the simple, emphatic headline, “Free and fair” – predicted: “There is every likelihood that South Africa’s founding elections will be declared free and fair in spite of a series of breakdowns in the Independent Electoral Commission’s machinery.
“Foreign and local observer teams have labelled the elections a ‘definite success’ and a ‘victory for peace’, in spite of logistical and technical hitches.
“IEC chairman Johann Kriegler, ANC president Nelson Mandela and President de Klerk have also pronounced their satisfaction with the elections, which stretched to four days in some areas.”
Perhaps the greater measure of the success of the 1994 election was the uncomplicated ease with which ordinary people expressed just what they thought, and voted accordingly.