Former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, the head of the AU Election Observation Mission at Wednesday’s elections, said the malfunctioning of equipment as millions of South Africans voted could have been avoided.
Kenyatta, one of 60 international observers who were part of monitoring the country’s polls, called on the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to investigate the malfunctioning of voting equipment that led to long queues and voting ending after midnight in some parts of the country.
“It’s a question of the commission ensuring that all these items are working and functional at the time because the system is all right, but it is as good as it is functioning on the day it is required to function. The IEC should look into it and ensure that, going forward, this problem does not repeat itself,” he said.
He told eNCA he was concerned that this would have a negative impact on young voters who were prepared to exercise their democratic rights.
Observers, political parties and citizens have raised concerns over the performance of the IEC during the national and general elections.
IEC KwaZulu-Natal electoral officer Ntombifuthi Masinga said they experienced a late surge in the numbers of voters, particularly in eThekwini.
“In some of our voting stations, presiding officers were quite overwhelmed with the numbers that we saw coming in,” she said.
Masinga said there was an issue with the voter management devices (VMDs), which were meant to make the IEC’s processes more efficient.
According to the IEC, a technical glitch with the VMDs contributed to long queues, and they then instructed staff to revert to the manual processing of voters.
“Some stations closed as late as 2am to ensure every voter was attended to.”
Mbali Ntuli, CEO and founder of Ground Work Collective, said the organisation had observers of all ages and demographics in all nine provinces on Thursday.
Ntuli said they found that not all voting stations opened on time and there were issues with the VMDs.
“There was a lot of confusion with voters around Section 24 (A) votes that would allow people to vote outside of the voting district where they were registered.”
She said the move to manual ballots was also problematic as the VMDs had not updated and people could not find themselves on the roll, even though they had been registered.
“A few people had been turned away, but as the day went on things stabilised,” Ntuli said.
ActionSA KZN premier candidate Zwakele Mncwango said the IEC did not do enough to educate voters about the Section 24 (A) voter registration process.
He said they received many calls from students who live in KwaZulu-Natal but registered to vote in the provinces where they study.
“We are concerned about how the IEC handled this whole election process.
It looked like they were not prepared,” he said.
NFP leader Irvin Barnes said they had received numerous complaints from voters about IEC officials arriving late and voters having to wait in long queues. He said voting should be easy and he called on the IEC to get all its systems in place.
AM4C leader Munzoor Shaik Emam called for proper training for IEC officials and said there needed to be an investigation into how the IEC handled the elections.
He noted that the voting booths were not private where he voted.
“They say your vote is private, but I did not see that. People were busy moving around inside the voting station while others were voting. This is unacceptable,” said Emam.
* Additional reporting by Thakasani Khumalo
The Mercury