Managing Elections in South Africa: Context and Challenges

Dr. Michael Sutcliffe and Sue Bannister (Directors: City Insight (Pty) Ltd)

Although the 2024 National and Provincial election process has yet to be concluded,  it appears to be a watershed in the development of our democracy.   In drafting our Constitution we agreed that firstly, every citizen has the right to free, fair and regular elections. In this regard, we must stand proud that we are about to conclude our twelfth democratic election, for all spheres of government, each held regularly and to date all declared to be free and fair.  This election has extended to National and Provincial elections the right for independents to stand for elections, a right that has to date existed in the 5 local elections.

Secondly, our Constitution requires that we establish an electoral system which must result, in general, in proportional representation.  In drafting this principle we knew that this was the fairest approach in ensuring that each vote will meaningfully record our diversity and differences in ways that our representatives are not just from parties who may have been first past the post, with the remaining runners having no say in our legislative and executive matters.  All political parties knew in the 1990s in drafting this principle that this was best for our country and would certainly result in legislatures being elected where there is no majority party.  Indeed, this has happened in all local elections since 2000, and in some of our provincial legislatures, but has never happened in the case of the national legislatures (National Assembly and National Council of Provinces).  At the time of writing, this situation will now change, creating a new reality for national elections.

Thirdly, our Constitution required an Electoral Commission to run the elections and it must be independent, subject only to the Constitution and law, impartial and must function without fear favour or prejudice. This is easier said than done and because we are a democracy we must be proud of what they have achieved for reasons covered below.  Managing elections as proportionality kicks in with increased contestation is not for the faint-hearted.  Today, such management is particularly challenging as social media takes over our lives and we have to increase our vigilance to distinguish between truth and fiction.

The sheer scale of what the IEC manages is huge and should be appreciated.   And over the voting period this week, there were a wide variety of challenges which had to be addressed by the IEC, SAPS and other parties:

• A few Voting Stations opened late, but almost all had opened by 9am.
• Insufficient measures were available for persons with disabilities.
• Non-functional Voter Management Devices (Scanners), largely due to internet challenges. The IEC ensured that manual scans were used in such cases.
• A few Presiding Officers (POs) not wanting to use the manual scan or change the queueing system. These were addressed through Provincial/National IEC intervention.
• Some Voting Stations had a shortage of some voting material (ballot boxes and materials) as the day progressed where in a few cases area managers were slow to respond.
• Some voters did not appear on the voters roll even when they had updated their details.
• Security incidents to date have resulted in 98 cases being registered with over 50 arrests having been made by SAPS.
• Long queues in some stations particularly in early morning and late evening, but the IEC gave the assurance that anyone in the queue at 9pm was not turned away.
• A few instances of voters being blocked at the gate by other parties refusing them access. This also included a few cases where SAPS stopped voters wearing party regalia but these were addressed as voters are entitled to wear party regalia.
• Some cases where electricity went off.
• Spending an inordinate amount of time with manipulated videos on social media, wrong information or information which was not contextualised being disseminated even by the media and analysts, etc.

Almost all of these issues were resolved at a local level, including bringing additional IEC persons into specific stations assist in managing where there were long queues.  It is expected that in time the IEC will detail the root causes of these problems and how they may be mitigated in future although it must be said, for reasons detailed below, some of these problems are due to the geography of human settlements.

There were two issues that existed before but which took a specific form in these elections and these were voters who  wanted to vote outside their registered Voting Station and had not applied for these Section 24A applications.  A further issue was long queues and delays in processing voters, a matter which will require the IEC to provide specific evidence on where these were and what the root causes happened to be.

To a large extent, though, these specific challenges seemed to result directly from legislative changes made firstly, to address the need to accommodate independent candidates and secondly to address the need to ensure all voters are registered with an address.  In previous elections independents could not stand, and there were apparently instances where persons voted more than once.  This resulted in legislation which required each voter to receive three ballots, to accommodate independent candidates that are contesting a seat in the region for one of the 200 regional National Assembly seats.

More importantly, though, the challenge of long queues was primarily found in VDs with large numbers of registered voters.  Our own observations across eThekwini and in discussions with colleagues in places like Johannesburg and Buffalo City, was that these were particularly found in inner city and higher educational precincts.

To explain this, we must note that colonialism and apartheid have had a huge impact not only historically on the geography of human settlements, but post-1994 there remain significant movements of people reversing that apartheid reality.  Because our IEC must ensure every voter in South Africa has an opportunity to vote, they have had to configure an arrangement of VDs which mirror that reality.

Whilst we do not have the space to provide such evidence some of examples include:

• The 26,7 million voters are unevenly spread across the nine provinces, with the largest province in South Africa in area being Northern Cape with only 2,7% of the voters and the smallest province in area being Gauteng having the largest number of 23,6% of the voters.
• There are 72 VDs with over 6000 voters comprising in total just under 500000 voters, whilst there are 6828 VDs with less than 500 voters comprising in total over 2 million voters.
• Johannesburg has 865 VDs with each covering an average area of 2 square kilometres, with on average 2674 voters per VD.
• Hantam on the other hand in the Northern Cape has only 23 VDs and the average size of each of these VDs is almost 1700 square kilometres with on average 611 registered voters per VD.

This is the reality of our country and so the scale of what the IEC has to do to manage its constitutionally required functions cannot be underestimated.

We must remain proud, though, that we are one of the relatively few countries that has an independent electoral commission which has dealt with a myriad of issues, including court actions, complaints, challenges.  Fortunately, it must operate transparently, allowing for a wide range of parties and interests to have their say and be responded to.