The Electoral Commission of SA’s (IEC’s) chief electoral officer, Sy Mamabolo, sprang to commission’s defence on Tuesday, shielding its integrity from criticism despite numerous complaints and objections from voters and political parties raised with it.
The grievances that have been raised with the IEC include logical problems where registered voters did not appear on the voters roll. Voters who had registered a change of address were also unable to cast their vote as a result of the new information not being captured and IEC staff not been adequately trained.
There were also problems with the IEC’s voter management system (VMD) — which it had introduced for the first time in this election, against the advice of many political parties — and the backup “zip-zip” machines could not be used because the commission had not supplied paper for them.
Undertrained and “incompetent” presiding officers were another problem raised by political parties. There was an arrest for ballot-stuffing by a presiding officer in KwaZulu-Natal.
At the 11am media briefing on Tuesday, Mamabolo defended the IEC, saying its electoral officers had received training although admitted that “some do things that are untoward and not prescribed and when that happens, the commission expels them, blacklists them so that they are not used in future elections”.
He also defended the VMDs, saying they were the “mainstay” of the local government elections held on Monday.
By using the VMDs, Mamabolo said the IEC managed to process more than 12.1-million voters, and were able to capture and register voters’ addresses during the voter registration weekend held in September. Doing so would have taken months without the devices, he said, adding this resulted in the capturing of 176,000 addresses that were subsequently included on the voters’ roll.
“Without the VMD it would have been a sheer impossibility to deliver these elections …. The VMD was an important national investment. It has laid a solid base for exploiting digital technology to give us greater integrity and controls in our electoral process,” said Mamabolo.
He admitted, however, that using the devices for the first time “created a bit of frustration, no doubt about it”.
Regarding reports of ballot papers running short in some voting stations, Mamabolo said the commission had printed “sufficient ballot papers” and that there should not have been a shortage to begin with.
“In the distribution chains, our officials made decisions about how many [ballot papers] to take to voting stations [and this] created undue frustration on the side of voters. He said the IEC worked under extreme deadline to deliver the election.
However, the IEC’s alleged poor performance could be linked to its finances. In November, Business Day reported that the IEC had an R118.4m budget cut for 2020/2021, which the commission said had affected “all aspects of its institutional life”.
Along with the budgetary cuts, the holding of elections during Covid-19 has meant that the IEC has had to spend extra money on safety measures and procuring personal protective equipment.
In May, Glen Mashinini, chair of the IEC, which has a budget of R2.31bn for 2021/2022, told the portfolio committee on home affairs that the personnel required to conduct the elections amounted to R500m in costs (27% of the budget). Mashinini told the committee that the procurement of all electoral materials, logistics and storage requirements amounted to R200m (10% of the budget).
When Business Day asked about the effects of the budgetary cuts on the election, Mamabolo reduced the question to the procurement of PPE, saying: “On the issue of budget, the Treasury did assist us with an allocation to cover the PPE costs, and we have applied that budget to procure PPE for all voting stations.”
IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
IEC deputy chief electoral officer Nomsa Masuku said training had been extended to electoral officers, and that while a few may have acted badly — some were reportedly accused of bullying journalists at voting stations — it could have been because they were under pressure, although that that was not an excuse.
“To every single person we didn’t serve to the standard expected, you deserve better … we offer an unmitigated apology, we pledge we will do better,” said Masuku.
The IEC said vote counting was continuing, with 90% of the results expected to be finalised on Tuesday evening, with the rest to take another 24 hours to finish.
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