Hello, we’re here to steal the election
Rigged poll began with ‘ANC’ arriving with blankets, food and official forms
ABBY Majeng and his neighbours in Marikana informal settlement regularly cross the dusty street that separates them from Baipei township to fetch water on the other side.
Every morning and evening they fill drums and buckets in Baipei because they do not have basic services — water and electricity — in their settlement.
But on the morning of December 10 2013 — the day six by-elections were held in Tlokwe municipality — something unusual happened.
That day, people from Marikana crossed to Baipei as usual, but they came without buckets.
Instead, they carried identity documents — which was strange, considering it was not a social grants payout day.
The informal settlement and the township fall under two different wards — Marikana under Ward 17 and Baipei under Ward 13. Ward 13 was holding a byelection that day.
Ward 17 was not, but many of its people voted anyway. Majeng was among them. The Ward 13 outcome became the subject of a Constitutional Court challenge that was resolved this week when, for the first time since 1994, the court annulled the result of a poll conducted by the Independent Electoral Commission.
The outcomes of the other byelections held that day were also set aside after similar irregularities were uncovered.
The vote-rigging of the byelection in Baipei, the result of which handed victory to ANC candidate Thabo Melamu, involved people said to have been “ANC volunteers” bringing people to cast votes in areas where they were not qualified to do so.
It began, Majeng told the Sunday Times in Tlokwe this week, when he was resting in his shack one day and a group of ANC election campaigners knocked on the door. They came bearing food parcels and blankets — and bundles of voterregistration forms.
They convinced the unemployed father of three, he said, to register for the Ward 13 byelection.
“All of us then voted in Ward 13, myself included. I didn’t qualify but they made me fill in a form. But I didn’t vote for them, I voted EFF,” said Majeng.
Voter registration forms seen by the Sunday Times showed that some residents, such as one Aaron Mokgwetwa, were allowed to vote despite having failed to give their physical addresses as electoral law requires.
Motlalepule Kula was allowed to cast her ballot despite having registered to vote at Potchefstroom Primary School, which falls under Ward 5 and had no by-election at the time.
Joseph Phakedi was allowed to vote even though the physical address supplied, “1715 Marikana”, did not exist. Addresses in Marikana (not to be confused with the mining township of the same name) start with the letter “M”.
The losing candidates in Ward 13 were independent candidate Johannes Sesing Johnson and the DA’s Chris Drift.
Johnson suspected that the election had been rigged.
He joined Xolile David Kham, who lost in Ward 18, and other losing candidates in challenging the outcome of the seven byelections in the Electoral Court.
The group, comprising mostly former ANC councillors, challenged the results of by-elections held on September 12 2013 in Ward 18 and others held on December 10 in Wards 1, 4, 11, 12, 13 and 20.
They lost their case in the Electoral Court but appealed to the Constitutional Court, which ruled in their favour this week.
In a unanimous judgment, the court ordered the IEC to re-run the by-elections within three months.
The court said Kham’s court challenge had serious implicalenge tions for South Africa’s constitutional democracy.
“This local electoral dispute might be thought to be of little moment save to the citizenry of Tlokwe, but the applicants’ chal- to the outcome of the byelections poses questions that go to the heart of our constitutional commitment to a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people,” the court said.
So brazen and widespread were the irregularities that they have put the credibility of the IEC into question.
Kham, who this week hailed the outcome as victory against corruption, accused the IEC and the ANC of having connived to deny independent candidates electoral victory.
“We have always known that we were strong on the ground. That’s why the ruling party made sure they went out of their way to connive with the IEC. They bought people with blankets and got state institutions to come and help them to campaign because they were fearing the independents,” said Kham.
“We are going to contest byelections and the 2016 elections as independents.”
In the Ward 18 by-election, where Kham lost, 1 404 people voted.
In his court papers, Kham said he suspected that his “political opponents had orchestrated . . . improper registrations” so as to ensure his defeat at the polls.
I didn’t qualify [to vote in that ward] but they made me fill in a form. I voted for the EFF They bought people with blankets and got state institutions to help them