Nine parties for elections so far in NC

MORE than 150 parties have so far registered to contest the August 3 municipal elections and nine of them are in the Northern Cape while Gauteng is at the bottom of the list with just eight.

This is compared to the Western Cape, which could again end up with the longest ballot paper in this year’s local government elections, with 61 parties already registered with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) – more than double the number in any other province.

Of the 154 parties registered so far to contest the August 3 municipal elections, 61 are in the Western Cape, 30 are in Limpopo, 14 each in KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, nine in the Northern Cape and eight in Gauteng.

IEC chairman Vuma Mashinini told Parliament’s Home Affairs committee earlier this week that the official proclamation of the election date was imminent.

Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des van Rooyen could be expected to make the announcement within the next 10 days. Once the date has been proclaimed, the voters’ roll would be certified and no further additions would be made.

But Mashinini did not want to reveal the IEC’s “plan B” if the Constitutional Court ruled that all the names of registered voters must be accompanied by a residential address, saying the matter was sub judice.