[ Home ] [ Speeches & statements ]

Introduction

One of the founding values of the Republic of South Africa is "a multi-party system of democratic government" where "[e]very citizen has the right to free, fair and regular elections". The Constitution accordingly dictates that the country's second elections for the National Assembly and the nine provincial assemblies must take place somewhere between 1 May and 29 July 1999, the government to fix precisely when. The Constitution also dictates that those elections are to be managed by an impartial and independent electoral commission. In less than a year's time, therefore, the IEC must afford the electorate the opportunity to choose its national and provincial governments for the ensuing five years.

Second elections are generally regarded as an important measure of a new democracy's progress. In our particular case that is all the more true. To be sure, the elections of 1994 ushered in democracy; but true participatory democracy can not be established through one election alone. Our Constitution recognises that there must be a gradual healing of the wounds left by our past of injustice, division and strife - and that elections are crucial to the prognosis. Each successive election satisfactorily concluded is a step towards a healthy democracy.

At the same time elections are risky undertakings for fledgling democracies. A campaign disfigured by violence, chaos at the polls or in the count, and a consequent aftermath of controversy, can do great and lasting damage. The ideal is a tolerant electorate, wise political leadership and an electoral administration that is competent and impartial. The IEC is grateful for this opportunity to inform the electorate of its plans and progress towards that ideal.

The elections of 1994 as well as the local elections of 1995 and 1996, despite their significant political achievements, were administratively flawed. The lessons of those elections have been learnt and we hope to avoid the mistakes. This applies as much to ensuring the integrity of the 1999 elections as it does to conducting those elections as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. Although freedom has no price and democracy is not cheap, elections must be affordable to retain their legitimacy. The IEC is therefore committed to strengthening constitutional democracy by doing all in its power to give the country and the taxpayer the best possible value for money.

Let me now give you an overview of the progress the IEC has already made.

Staff establishment

Management of the next elections entails, first, establishing a relatively small contingent of permanent officials for strategic planning and to prepare for the recruitment, training, testing, deployment, provisioning, supervision and remuneration of the armies of short-term officials needed intermittently when major elections are due. This we are in the process of doing. Election House has been established in Pretoria as the permanent headquarters of the IEC and in each of the provinces a provincial office is being established.

Local electoral agents

The IEC also plans to establish an electoral capacity at local level, relying mostly on existing capacity within government structures, particularly in the local government sphere. A process of identifying local electoral agents and contracting with them, as well as for municipal resources, is under way and should be completed during September 1998.

Delimitation

The second main avenue of endeavour is the establishment of a reliable voters' roll. A major lesson of the 1994 elections is that it is impossible to conduct a sound election without a voters' roll. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Constitution stipulates that there must be a national common voters' roll, which is to be divided into provincial and municipal segments.

The elections of 1995/6, in turn, taught that it is impossible to draw up a voters' roll by first recording the names of voters and then trying to allocate them to their correct voting districts. The majority of South Africans do not have identifiable addresses and they therefore have to be located in some other way before voter registration commences. To overcome this problem the IEC has devised a unique system.

Geographic Information System

Voters will be located not by means of their addresses, but by reference to a relatively small area (called a voting district) by combining geographic data obtained from the Surveyor-General and demographic data obtained during the 1996 census. In collaboration with the Department of Land Affairs and the Central Statistical Service, the IEC created a Geographic Information System (an electronic map) of the whole country which spatially locates the population statistics from the 1996 census. It was a project of immense scale and complexity. In record time every surveyed property in the country was accurately positioned, every dwelling of whatever nature was geographically located and the population of every little community was mapped. With the registration of voters we will be adding the names of those people.

The GIS will not only serve electoral planning but it will enable planners in all spheres of government, as well as in the private sector, to link census and other data spatially on a map. Where we build our schools, hospitals or clinics, where an entrepreneur opens new outlets, can all be determined by this system. The GIS is a valuable national asset.

Delimitation of voting districts

Having spatially located the population, the IEC has been working three shifts a day, seven days a week, to delimit some 15 000 voting districts. The norm for urban voting districts is 3 000 voters and for rural districts 1200 voters. Each district will have one voting station and will ordinarily be small enough for voters to walk to that station on election day. The initial delimitation of all voting districts will be completed this week and we have already distributed thousands of electronically generated maps to local authorities for local scrutiny by all role-players. By mid-September 1998 we hope to have completed the final maps of all voting districts.

Registration of voters

The next critical phase of the pre-election programme will be a general registration of voters starting in October/November 1998. Initially a registration point will be established within each voting district where citizens armed with a South African or TBVC ID book can apply to register. It is important to note that one can register only in the voting district in which one ordinarily resides. Indeed, registration stations are planned to serve as voting stations next year and voters will have to return to their registration stations to cast their votes. Registration will be greatly facilitated by an ingenious device we have developed (and named "Zipzip") that combines a hand-held bar-code scanner, a key-pad and a printer. Voters will be provided with proof of their application for registration by means of adhesive receipts gummed into their identity documents, specifying their registration/voting districts.

Wide Area Network

Effective communication between the IEC command centre and its thousands of delivery points is vital to both the registration drive and the actual elections. That lesson was learned in 1994. The obvious solution is a wholly reliable and secure computer network of sufficient capacity to carry the innumerable commands, reports and enquiries as well as the masses of information that go to make up nation-wide undertakings of such complexity. Serving urban areas is easy; serving rural areas more difficult. Giving equal service to all is the real challenge. Armed with the advice of the country's IT industry, we decided to use satellite technology and engaged Telkom to implement it. This, we believe, is the only way of ensuring the requisite parity.

To date the IEC has identified 483 VSAT stations; over 400 have already been installed and the project should be completed next week. The backbone of the network will have been established and training for its maximal exploitation will commence.

Party liaison committees

An entirely different but equally important type of communication is that of political co-operation. The 1994 elections showed that willing and active participation by the political competitors is vital to a successful contest. The key is party liaison committees (PLCs) at all levels of government. A national committee has been functioning since 1997 and provincial PLCs have recently been established. At local level 137 liaison committees have already met and new ones are being established daily. The purpose of these committees is to promote transparency through consultation, to promote trust between parties and between them and the IEC, and so to promote conditions conducive to free and fair elections. PLCs have grass-roots knowledge and can solve problems better than the IEC can hope to do. Thus, for instance, they are being consulted on voting district boundaries and the identification of voting stations. They will be consulted on the selection of presiding officers and will generally play a watchdog role, monitoring one another as well as the IEC's far-flung army of registration/election/counting officials.

The importance of a culture of co-responsibility cannot be overstated. Apart from the transparency it brings, it binds all political role-players into an endeavour aimed at producing manifest freedom and fairness throughout the electoral process. The timeframe for previous elections did not enable the electoral administrators to extend the PLC system to local level. The current success in establishing it countrywide is bound to make an important contribution to successful elections.

Timeframe

The timeframe for the elections of 1999 has always been very tight, but the IEC's preparations for the 1999 elections are on track. Funding is still a problem but that is a matter we have to resolve - and which I have no doubt we will resolve. To my mind it is not a subject to dwell on.

Legislation

One of the facets of the overall programme that is running late is the creation of a legal framework for the elections. The existing Electoral Act was designed specifically for the 1994 elections and has served its purpose. Many technical decisions regarding the rules for the future have to be taken and the Home Affairs Portfolio Committee and the IEC are working long hours to shape a suitable Bill for submission to Parliament shortly. Thereafter the statutory framework will be fleshed out with detailed regulations.

Website

In the interim the preparations for registration are continuing. A particularly exciting development is that we plan to launch a website for the IEC by mid-September. Of course, nowadays the launch of a website is not in itself momentous. What is remarkable, though, is what we intend doing with it. First, we intend reflecting the general state of election readiness of the IEC on a daily basis not only to the press and to political parties, but to the public at large. In addition it will reflect details, including voting district maps, the location of registration and voting stations, the identity and addresses of presiding officers, the expected number of voters in each voting district as well as the percentage of voters already registered at any stage.

<EOD>

1