Protest ‘with vote, not in streets’
ELECTORAL Commission of SA chairman Glen Mashinini has urged South Africans to stop disrupting voter-registration and use their right to vote to ensure their issues are resolved.
ELECTORAL Commission of SA (IEC) chairman Glen Mashinini has urged South Africans to stop disrupting voter-registration and to use their right to vote to ensure their issues are resolved.
Mr Mashinini spent yesterday visiting voting stations around the Mbombela area in Mpumalanga. The weekend marked the second and final voter-registration weekend before the local government elections on August 3.
The elections are expected to be the most hotly contested since the country attained democracy.
Unlike the first registration weekend last month, during which there were a lot of protests throughout the country, this weekend was quiet apart from the closure of nine stations in Vuwani an area in Limpopo.
Vuwani is set to be merged with a nearby village, Malamulele, in a move both communities contest. They have complained they were left out of the demarcation process. The Vuwani stations were closed after residents disrupted registration to protest at the merger.
“If you have a grievance, you can’t impede the rights of others,” said Mr Mashinini.
He urged disgruntled residents to register for the elections, saying they would not be able to do so once Co-operative Governance Minister Desmond van Rooyen pronounced the election date.
The IEC said 1.2-million people visited voting stations on Saturday and 22,608 voting stations did not report any problems.
The Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters also said voters should take their issues to the ballot box and vote for the right leaders.
In Mpumalanga, Mr Mashinini found some addresses were missing from the roll. He said there was nothing the IEC could do but urge voters to update their details.
The commission has found itself in the Constitutional Court and Electoral Court following a complaint from independent candidates in Tlokwe in the North West that the voters roll did not list all voters’ addresses.
Last year, the Constitutional Court ruled that the 2013 Tlokwe by-election was not free and fair in seven wards. It ordered the commission to hold the by-election again with all the addresses or sufficient particularities of potential voters on the roll. The IEC approached the Constitutional Court for clarification on whether it needs to verify the addresses of voters who registered after the date of the order in November last year, or everyone on the voters roll. The IEC has postponed by-elections in other provinces pending the court’s clarification next month.
Last week, the commission sent out text messages to 5-million registered voters to tell them to update their address details.
The voters are among 16-million affected voters, 8-million of whom did not supply addresses. The rest gave generic addresses.
Commission spokeswoman Kate Bapela was not sure how many had verified their addresses. “Once we upload the figures from this weekend, we’re hoping that there will be a huge dent (in the number of people who still need to provide their address details).”
Once we upload the figures from this weekend, we’re hoping that there will be a huge dent (in the number of people who still need to provide their address details)