DA to oppose IEC’s Constitutional Court application to postpone Local Government Elections

05 August 2021

Should the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) persist with its application to the Constitutional Court to have the Local Government Elections postponed to February next year, the DA will ask to be joined as a party to their application so that we can put our views in front of the court and use our status as a respondent to fight for a timeous election and voter registration.

Through our lawyers we have given the IEC a deadline of tomorrow, Friday 6 August, to agree to stick to their prescribed timeframe for holding the elections, and to insert a registration period ahead of the elections along with a mechanism to reopen the voter’s roll in order to add new names. The roll was closed when the election date of 27 October was proclaimed by Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma on 3 August.

Failure by the IEC to do so will leave us no choice but to defend our Constitution and the democratic rights of voters in court.

Our Constitution prescribes that Local Government Elections must take place within 90 days of the end of the five-year term of municipal councils. It is the IEC’s job - their only job - to see to it that this happens. Even in a disrupted calendar there are other steps that can be taken to ensure that this fundamental democratic right is preserved before looking to change the Constitution.

The technicality of not being able to add names to the voter’s roll after the proclamation of the election date - which has now taken place - can be overcome by temporarily suspending the operation of Section 6 of the Municipal Electoral Act, rather than attempting to amend the Constitution in order to delay elections. It is the Constitutional Court’s duty to protect our Constitution, not change it.

By our calculations there could be as many as nine million eligible voters whose names are not currently on the roll. If the IEC does not afford them the opportunity to register, we cannot meet the threshold of a free and fair election. It is entirely possible to temporarily set aside Section 6 of the Act, hold a registration weekend by the end of August, and still hold the elections on the 27th of October.

We can and must conduct a safe registration period, adhering to all Covid protocols, just as we can and must conduct a safe election on 27 October. There is scientific consensus that this can be done, and indeed it has been done elsewhere in the world. This pandemic and the threat of Covid transmission will still be here, in some shape or form, for a long time to come. We cannot allow this to subvert our democratic process and deny voters their chance to hold their local governments to account.

Once you set a precedent of fiddling with constitutionally-mandated election timeframes, it can become a slippery slope towards a permanent subversion of democracy.

However, it is clear that a Covid-affected calendar and the technicalities around the voter’s roll are merely a smokescreen for the real reason for wanting to delay the elections: the ANC’s fear of voters. With our economy in turmoil, an unemployment rate of over 42%, an internal factional war that is fast splitting the party in two and the majority of ANC-run municipalities on the brink of collapse, the party is simply not ready to face the justified anger of voters at the ballot box.

By postponing the elections, the IEC would be complicit in helping the ANC evade electoral accountability. The DA will not let that happen.

Statement issued by John Steenhuisen MP - Leader of the Democratic Alliance, 5 August 2021