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Cape Town — The Independent Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) says that election officials were removed from their voting station in Nigel, in the East Rand, after voting materials were found stored at the house of a party agent.The IEC says that staff in ward 77 contravened elections protocol by using the house of a party agent to store voting materials overnight between special voting days.
They said that the voting materials were removed from the premises and taken to a nearby police station for storage.
Earlier, IEC chair Pansy Tlakula said some ballot papers had been accidentally dropped from a van in Cape Town on Sunday.
“They were found. Please let us not be alarmist. We recovered all those ballot papers.”
“The ballot papers have serial numbers so we are able to trace each ballot paper to its voting station. We report this matter to the party liaison committee, for transparency.”
She said the lost and found ballot papers would not be used in the elections.
A message was then transmitted to IEC officials “to take special care when they deliver ballot papers”.
“You would know that in our country, people will hire vehicles which are not up to standard for this purpose [transporting ballots].
“We have given a firm instruction that vehicles that transport ballots must be properly secured and must have features that enable that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again,” said Tlakula.
South Africa’s fifth national and provincial elections will be held today.
Tlakula said everything was in place at the country’s 22,263 voting stations, which would welcome the anticipated 25.39 million registered voters.
Meanwhile, former president Thabo Mbeki cast his vote in South Africa’s fifth post-apartheid elections at his home in Killarney, Johannesburg, yesterday.
He thanked the IEC for allowing South Africans who are unable to vote at their voting station on election day, to cast a special vote in the national and provincial elections.
“I am going to Nigeria this afternoon for the World Economic Forum meeting, and I am glad that the IEC allowed us to vote in the elections,” Mbeki said.
He said the election featured political parties unknown to him. “There is a very long list of parties in this year’s election, some of the parties I have never heard of,” Mbeki said.
IEC officials explained the voting procedure to Mbeki before handing him the stamped ballot paper and an envelope. He took the stamped ballot paper and went inside the house to make his mark.
Zuma also brushed off suggestions that an anti-corruption report criticising a state-funded security upgrade to his home will damage his party ahead of elections.
The controversy follows a report published in March by prosecutor Thuli Madonsela, which said Zuma had “benefited unduly” from the “excessive” $23m upgrades to his Nkandla home. The bill included a chicken run, amphitheatre and swimming pool.
“It’s not an issue with the voters,” said the president on Monday, who is expected to be voted in for a second five-year term by parliament after today’s election.
Zuma, whose personal approval rating has declined seven points, to 58 percent, since the publication of the report, said only the “media and the opposition” were concerned with the issue, Reuters reported.
The president’s party, the ANC, has been in power since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Despite high unemployment and widespread disenchantment with the government, it is still expected to win almost 64 percent in the election, down only slightly from nearly 66 percent five years ago, a poll published in South Africa’s Sunday Times said. Zuma defended the upgrades to his home and said the accusations against him were unfair given the importance of protecting any head of state.
“My homestead was burned twice during violence and secondly my wife, criminals came, raped my wife,” he said, referring to incidents when he was a provincial minister from 1994 to 1999.
Zuma has been criticised over the Nkandla scandal by senior members within the ruling ANC and by swathes of angry youths, who carry out almost daily protests in townships over poor government services and a lack of jobs.
However, the ANC’s legacy as the party that freed millions of blacks from apartheid ensures it maintains a fiercely loyal support base, and even many of its detractors would rather not vote than support its opponents.
In a related incident, a group of women tried to interrupt a Democratic Alliance gathering near Noord Street in the Johannesburg CBD yesterday.
“We don’t want you here Zille. Go away. Viva ANC, viva!” they shouted at the tops of their voices from the balcony of a flat near Noord Street.
They did so as DA Gauteng premier candidate Mmusi Maimane was preparing to address a group of supporters from Park Station who had been singing and chanting with party leader Helen Zille.
The women were ignored and eventually stopped hurling insults and opted to watch while Maimane and Zille addressed their supporters.
Maimane urged the supporters to fire the corrupt government and elect a clean one.
“Tomorrow we are firing them. We are going to hire a government that works, especially in Johannesburg.”
In Rustenburg about 1,000 EFF supporters gathered in Freedom Park ahead of the arrival of party leader Julius Malema yesterday.
The group, dressed in red berets and red T-shirts, danced in front of an Economic Freedom Fighters’ branded truck, ready for Malema’s last push to garner votes for his party.
Malema was expected to make door-to-door visits before addressing supporters at a sports ground, which is 400m from a community hall that was torched on April 27.
Malema also campaigned in Marikana, where 44 people were killed during a violent strike in the area in 2012. Thirty-four people were killed when police fired on them on August 16 that year. Ten people, including two police officers and two security guards, died in the preceding week. — Sapa
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