SA AT 30: IEC IN THE CROSSHAIRS

It’s been open season on the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) this year. Just this week, South African Prisoners Organisation for Human Rights president Golden Miles Bhudu said the commission had lost its independence in 1999, when it had excluded prisoners from voting. (The decision was later overturned in court.)

Whatever Bhudu’s feelings about the IEC’s decision on the eligibility of prisoners to vote, it didn’t justify his subsequent comments, as reported by the SABC: “The IEC was compromised and corrupted ... and followed a certain route, siding with the ANC, and that is why the ANC has won the elections in flying colours ever since.”

These are sensational remarks, backed by not a shred of evidence. If anything, the ANC’s overwhelming support in early elections was the result of a party that delivered on its promises, as Jonny Steinberg argues in the cover story (page 16). Its subsequent descent into the mire saw its support tail off to the point where it looks likely to lose an outright majority for the first time.

So not a jot to sustain Bhudu’s remarks. But they come on top of similar efforts, by others, to impugn the integrity of the IEC. First there was MK Party leader Jacob Zuma questioning the transparency of the voting process, suggesting by implication all manner of subversive activity. Zuma, a former president who won two terms as a result of free and fair elections, magically discovered that ballots are counted in secret in voting stations, which is hogwash.

That the IEC decided he was ineligible to appear on the MK Party lists simply added grist to the mill of the aggrieved Zuma. Even if that decision was overturned by the Electoral Court.

Then there’s EFF leader Julius Malema, who said the IEC’s legal battle with Zuma it has taken the Electoral Court ruling to the Constitutional Court feels “personal”. He insinuated that the party’s court appearances could be construed as a strategy to keep Zuma in the news, trotting out old murmurs that IEC commissioner Glen Mashinini was a Zuma ally.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has weighed in with a whack of paranoia, claiming that foreign powers may attempt to influence the results in retaliation for South Africa taking Israel to the International Court of Justice.

The DA has expressed the need for international observers. And commentators have questioned the IEC’s decision to take the Zuma matter on appeal when the commission has simply said it needs clarity on the relevant constitutional provisions. A push for transparency, in other words.

In no instance has there been evidence to support a position that variously calls the IEC captured, corrupt or incapable.

The problem, when the IEC is used as a political football, is that it diminishes the credibility of the organisation, and so calls the legitimacy of the elections into question.

If anything, the IEC has shown in election after election that it runs a slick, transparent and credible operation: ballots are counted in front of party agents, observers and IEC staff at voting centres; they are audited; they are tallied in real time at the national results centre.

When it comes to the IEC, vigilance should be par for the course, but rumour, innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations are simply undemocratic and dangerous. They put the IEC in the position of fighting a rearguard action, distracting it from what is one of the most important polls in the country’s democratic history.