Cape Town - The Western Cape 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, 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 on Tuesday 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.
“It’s not to say we don’t have plans and views on the matter,” Mashinini said.
“We are committed to whatever the order is. We will implement it.”
Of the more than 26 million registered voters, 46 percent either have no physical address documented by the IEC, or only a partial one.
The home affairs committee said they were “alarmed” and “worried” by the high number of voters that could potentially be affected by the Constitutional Court’s ruling.
In line with the constitution, the election cannot be held later than August 16.
IEC deputy chairman Terry Tselane said not holding municipal elections would give rise to a constitutional conundrum.
“There’s no appetite from anybody to change the constitution. The elections have to happen,” he said.
From the expected date of proclamation the IEC would only have around 73 days to prepare for the election.
IEC chief executive Mosotho Moepya said the commission was working around the clock, with “every person conceivable in the country” to get as many addresses as possible on the voters’ roll.
But he said it was the nature of the South African landscape that at least eight million dwellings did not have an identifiable, physical address.
Landmarks had been determined in rural and informal areas to help in assigning an address to voters in these districts.
“We are not sitting back and doing nothing about it. Everyone will either have an address or sufficient particularities,” Moepya said.
Moepya said he wanted to dispel reports that addresses had been purged or lost from the IEC’s database.
No addresses were required of voters when they registered for the first democratic elections in 1994.
Tselane said no exceptions could be made for another voter registration drive in Vuwani in Limpopo where protesters have gone on the rampage torching schools in opposition to being moved from the Makhado municipality to a new municipality after the elections. Tselane said the IEC was satisfied that there was an adequate voters’ roll for the area.
Cape Argus