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06 January 2006: No 01/06

LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS LOOM: BE PROPERLY REGISTERED TO CAST YOUR VOTE

Following South Africa’s successful third democratic general elections on 14 April 2004, the country is now gearing itself to holding similarly successful third local government elections on 1 March 2006.

In terms of the Municipal Stuctures Act 117 of 1998, voting for all municipal councils must be held within 90 days of the expiry date of the term of municipal councils, which is 6 December 2005.

The local government elections are different from the general elections in that they present the electorate with a chance to exercise their democratic right to choose people who will represent them at grassroots level.

South Africans elected the country’s national and provincial leadership in April 2004, and now is the time to elect people who will represent their interests in metropolitan, district and local councils.

With the elections approaching, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is faced with the task of conducting free, fair and credible elections.

One of the IEC’s responsibilities is to compile and maintain a national common voters’ roll – a database of all eligible voters – and to verify it before any elections take place.

Apart from containing the voters’ particulars, the voters’ roll is used to guide the IEC in planning and taking co-ordinated decisions that would amongst others, prevent electoral fraud.

Since people can only vote in the voting districts in which they reside and where their particulars appear on the Voters’ Roll, eligible voters who have changed residence and those who have not previously registered have to go and register in their respective districts.

As a result of the recent demarcation and delimitation processes by the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB), new voting districts have been created.

The demarcation and delimitation processes saw an increase in the number of voting districts from 14 988 in 2000 to 18 830 for the upcoming elections.

Because people who now fall under new voting districts must re-register, the IEC embarked on a targeted registration drive to register those who are affected in this regard.

IEC initially set aside 3 September 2005 for voter registration to update the Voters’ Roll but as there were indications that more people did not register, it also set aside a second weekend of 19 and 20 November in this regard.

As a result nearly two million people visited voting stations during the November voter registration weekend alone – 413 666 were new registrations while 654 903 were re-registrations and more than 600 000 voters verified their details on the voters’ roll.

This has now put the number of those registered on the country’s voters’ roll at approximately 21 million.

Voters who are not yet registered can do so by registering at the office of the Municipal Electoral Office in their municipality, details of which are available on the IEC website at www.elections.org.za or they can call the IEC Call Centres’s toll free number: 0800 11 8000.

The increase in voting districts has brought challenges for the IEC, but also provides people with easy access to voting stations, reduces queues and reduces travelling for long distances.

Some of the challenges towards achieving the targeted registration number are voter apathy, emigration and the non-collection of ID books.

To address these, the IEC is appealing to the South African electorate to acquire bar-coded ID books and collect them, to register in the voting districts where they reside and to cast their ballots on voting day.

The Department of Home Affairs has also embarked on a “Lokisa Ditokomane” (fix your documents) campaign to urge people with erroneous identity documents to get corrected for free at any home affairs office.

During the run up to the elections, emphasis is being placed on attracting more youth and males to participate in the voting for their representatives, as statistics reflected a low number of voters in the two groups.

Also during the upcoming elections the IEC is encouraging the participation of women in local government structures, since they constitute the majority of people on the Voters’ Roll.

Everyone is encouraged to visit their local voting district and check their status!

You can also check your details on the IEC website at www.elections.org.za; at any Absa ATM; by sending an SMS with your ID number to 32810 or by calling the IEC call centre on the toll free number: 0800 11 8000 where an operator will give the same information.