By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa led a door to door campaign in Mamelodi,Tshwane, reminding and encouraging eligible voters to register to vote for the upcoming 2024 national and provincial elections.
He was joined by ANC Gauteng Provincial Chair and Premier Panyaza Lesufi, the party’s Chief Whip Pemmy Majodina and Collin Matjila, ANC Youth League leader.
This was the second and last day of the second voter registration weekend.
It was the last voter registration weekend as they headed to the polls.
Residents used the ANC’s campaign trail to tell the president about their frustrations, dissatisfaction, and disappointments of living in a metro that was not prioritising their lives.
The people of Mamelodi complained about service delivery, including water and electricity transformers shortages, filthy streets, raw sewage flowing through the streets as well as crime.
Ramaphosa said one of the major problems in the DA-run Tshwane was water, adding that it is the municipality’s responsibility to service their people.
“They are the ones who are supposed to clean the township, provide water, and resources, and just make sure that the township functions well,” he said.
He said this was unacceptable for the people in the area to live under those conditions.
However, Ramaphosa promised to address their concerns at a national level and said that Lesufi would also intervene to ensure that the people of Mamelodi were well taken off.
“We are now going to address the water challenges from national level. We will help the people of Mamelodi because of the situation, which is unacceptable,” said Ramaphosa.
Matjila said everything has collapsed in Tshwane Municipality under the DA, there is no water, the area is a crime zone and there are no services.
“We are here to revive the spirit of our people, revive our structures. Not voting ANC for the past 10 years. People are now paying the prize for that,” he said.
Ramaphosa added that the party would attain more than 50% in the upcoming general elections.
He said the party was coming back with a bang, as the majority of South Africans still believe in the movement.
“We have a very good democratic dispensation that needs to be supported by all South Africans young and old, especially young people who must take it upon themselves to register because it is about the future. These coming elections are about the future of this country and the future lies in the hands of young people as they go forward.
“We want them to be interested to be deeply involved in our democracy. Whoever they are going to vote for it is important that they should be the authors of their own destinies and be able to say we are taking our destiny and our future into our hands,” the president said.
Meanwhile the ANC wants former president Thabo Mbeki to help it campaign ahead of the elections this year.
Mbeki has criticised the party in the recent past. Last year, he hinted that he would not be willing to campaign for the party.
The weekend’s important registration activity comes on the back of two major achievements by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) which are:
- The national voters’ roll has, for the first time, surpassed the 27 million mark. In the 2019 National and Provincial Elections (NPE), the certified voters’ roll stood at 26.7 million.
- The online registration platform continues to prove that it is the mainstay of registrations in between general voter registration weekends. It has recorded just under 200 000 new registrations since the registration weekend in November 2023. Overall registration activity in that period stood at 498 000.
The Commission confirmed that more than a million new South Africans registered to vote for the 2024 national elections this weekend.
Over 500 000 citizens walked into registration stations on Saturday and another 564 715 citizens registered on Sunday.
The IEC said the Commission recorded 67 200 online registration transactions on Saturday and 34 293 registrations on Sunday.
The highest number of citizens registered to vote in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. Inidviduals aged between 30 and 39 yesars of age, fell in the group with the most registrations.
The IEC is expected to give a full update on the last registration weekend, when they address the media on Tuesday.