The commission in charge of elections in this country is pushing ahead with the preparations for voting despite having information about those who planned to rig the elections because they were not happy with the people from other countries who failed.
The officials of the commission said that they know those who want to disrupt the November 4 election, but they said that they leave this to the security agencies in the country. The chairman of the commission, Mr. Mosotho Moepya, said that the issue of illegal residents was left to the security agencies to deal with.
“This issue is on the table of the security agencies, including the ministerial committee that is dealing with this problem. We are focused on the work of preparing the elections but we know about the plans to rig the elections,” he said to the members of Parliament, who was explaining to them the preparations for the elections.
There are marches spread across the country for those who fled the country as some have started to return to their countries, as there is a deadline of June 30, so that they will no longer be seen in the country.
At the Parliamentary meeting, it was revealed that the election will be held in a situation where people are not happy with the government. They have lost hope in the functioning of democracy and are unhappy with politicians.
Mr. Masego Sheburi, the Deputy Chief Executive of the commission, said that the research they have done indicates that people have given up hope.
“Every time there is an election, we do research and talk to people about their expectations. People’s participation in the elections is decreasing as they have lost hope in the government and democracy,” he said.
He said they expect an increase in the number of candidates for seats in the local government elections.
“There are more than 95,000 who we expect to contest 10,532 seats in 214 municipalities. We expect the number of candidates to increase as in the 2021 election, there were 95,000 in 10,439 seats,” he said.
He stated that 2,108 seats will be up for grabs in KwaZulu-Natal, 1,647 in the Eastern Cape and 1,379 in Limpopo. Sheburi said that there are 27.9 million people in the country to vote.
KZN has 3.4 million people registered to vote, Gauteng has 3.2 million and EC has 1.9 million. Sheburi said that in a month they lost 34,000 people on the ballot due to death.
“We remove you from the list of people who will vote if you are dead. People living in other countries will not be able to vote in this election.”
4,466 wards will be contested as their number has increased by 20 due to the redrawing of boundaries. It is expected that the ballot will be closed in August once the date of the election has been officially registered under the government charter. This will be done by the Minister of Governance and Indigenous Affairs, Mr. Velenkosini Hlabisa.