Cyril Ramaphosa tears into DA’s ‘disingenuous’ election monitoring letter

President Cyril Ramaphosa had no kind words for the DA as he criticised the party for writing to Western countries asking for them to monitor and “ensure the integrity” of the upcoming national and provincial elections, despite SA having had independent observers during previous polls.

DA shadow minister of international relations Emma Powell wrote to US secretary of state Antony Blinken and 13 other foreign ministers last week, asking the foreign governments to deploy election observers to SA.

Ramaphosa described the DA’s move as “disingenuous and almost trying to mortgage our country to other powers in the world”. He said SA elections had been successfully monitored for years by representatives from the UN and the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) and no “rigged votes” were flagged by observers.

“We have our regional organisations, we have Sadc and indeed we have representatives of the UN as well. They always come to monitor our elections and we invite them to monitor. For a non-state entity [DA] to do something like that is basically saying we are mortgaging our democracy,” Ramaphosa said.

In the letter, Powell accused the ANC of clinging to power and former president Jacob Zuma’s Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) party as posing a risk to a peaceful election.

“Here, we are witnessing an increasing willingness by the ANC to forge alliances with malign international actors whose regimes are characterised by tyranny, terror and oppression.

“We therefore appeal to your government to recognise the high stakes for SA in the lead up to and aftermath of the NPE2024 [national and provincial election 2024]. It is in this context that we now formally request our partners in democracy to engage with consequence in the run-up to the election,” Powell’s letter read. 

International relations and co-operation minister Naledi Pandor agreed with Ramaphosa.

“SA has had six elections which have always been declared free and fair. We always had election observations which have [included] over 120 from different countries and organisations. To write such a letter, particularly to countries that do not have observations and have low participation rates in the elections, is rather surprising and demeaning,” Pandor said. 

IEC CEO Sy Mamabolo said the commission was not against election observers, but the DA had tackled the issue in an unusual manner.

“The commission believes that elections must be observed because observation gives us credibility. Nonetheless, we are alive to the fact that the letter by the DA is directly to an executive in another country. That is not how ordinarily the observation process works. Often the observation works at a multilateral level, AU, Sadc and so on,” Mamabolo said. 

“In the past, invitations have been extended to those multilateral bodies to come and observe the elections. So I think all the role players need to be alive to the fact that the issues need to preserve the integrity of democratic processes in respective countries.”

The IEC does allow international and domestic organisations to apply to monitor election as observers.

There were various reactions to the DA letter on social media, including the following: