By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) says registrations for the upcoming elections have surpassed the 27 million mark – for the first time since the dawn of democracy.
Chief electoral officer – Sy Mamabolo has been updating the media on its state of readiness in Pretoria on Wednesday, ahead of the second voter registration weekend.
The Commission has announced dates for a second voter registration weekend ahead of the 2024 national and provincial elections.
The IEC said the country’s 23,296 voting stations will be open from 8am to 5pm on February 3-4 to allow new voters to register and existing voters to inspect and update their registration details, if necessary.
Mamabolo said, “We are encouraged that we have reached this milestone of 27 million people on the voters’ roll, ahead of the second registration event scheduled for this weekend. In the 2019 national and provincial elections, the certified voters’ roll stood at 26.7 million.
“We recorded just under 200 000 new registrations since the registration weekend in November 2023. Overall, registration activity in that period is 498 000. Again, this is a new feat.”
Mamabolo said the online registration platform ‘has proven to be the mainstay of registrations in between general voter registration weekends’.
He highlighted that Gauteng saw 6.3-million registrations; KwaZulu-Natal has 5.5-million; Eastern Cape with 3.3-million; Western Cape with 3.2-million; Mpumalanga with 1.9-milllion; North West has 1.7-million registrations; Free State with 1.4-million and Northern Cape with 637 000 registrations.
Mamabolo said the gender demography remained the same with 55% of persons on the voters roll being female and 44% being male.
He added that the biggest age group on the voters roll is between 30 and 39 at 6.7-million registrations, followed by the 40 to 49 age group at 5.9-million. He added that person aged 50 to 59 accounts for 4.5-million voters and young persons between the ages of 20 and 29 nine make up 4.1-million voters.
Mamabolo explained that the success of the first Registration Weekend was, in the main, because of the efficiencies brought by the Voter Management Devices (VMD’s).
“The VMD is the mainstay technology for the delivery of the registration process. Once again, three business applications will be running on the VMDs during this weekend,” he said.
The international segment of the voters’ roll for out of country registrations stood at approximately 18 000 South Africans ahead of the registration weekend out of the country.
“Following the registration weekend for out of country citizens, this segment of the roll now stands at 29 318 voters. Out of country registrations can still continue via the online registration process that the Commission has developed and which is accessible through the Commission’s website,” Mamabolo said.
He said as of today, voters can also check their registration status and voting station details via the IEC’s Whatsapp Chatbot on 0600 88 0000.
The IEC’s Janet Love challenged former president Jacob Zuma to provide evidence to support his claim of bias against the IEC.
Zuma, who is campaigning for the newly-formed MK Party, recently accused the commission of favouring the ANC. He also claimed that some IEC officials could be bribed to bypass the commission’s system.
Love said the commission is not aware of any evidence to support Zuma’s claims.
“It is entirely irresponsible as a citizen to try and undermine a process rather than to enable it. This kind of talk that attempts to really inject into our country almost an insurrectionist mood is unacceptable and undemocratic.”
Watch Live in the video below:
Video Courtesy of IEC.