A man drops his voted in a marked ballot box. File Picture: Henk Kruger African News Agency (ANA).
Durban - The IFP has written to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) with an objection to the voters’ roll ahead of the by-election in ward 5 Mthonjaneni Municipality in the King Cetshwayo District in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
The by-election is set to be held on November 30.
The IFP has scored victories in several by-elections in the province in the past few months, including in ANC strongholds.
It won by-elections in uMuziwabantu Municipality (Harding), in the City of uMhlathuze (Richards Bay), as well as in Mthonjaneni (Melmoth), uMvoti (Greytown) and uMfolozi.
The IFP said in its letter to the IEC that it had discovered discrepancies regarding voters who had registered online and manually to vote in the ward 5 elections.
The party said some of the voters were previously on the roll for the recent previous by-elections in ward 12 in Mthonjaneni Municipality which were on August 12, and elections that took place in uMhlathuze Municipality in September.
Mthonjaneni IFP constituency chairperson, Sibongiseni Mthimkhulu said they have also identified the movement of people from outside the King Cetshwayo District who are now registered to vote at ward 5 just for these upcoming elections.
“I want to bring it to the attention of the commission that the exact locations of the people whom we are objecting against are not known to us and as a result of that, it was not feasible to serve notices of objection on them.
“It is really unbelievable and unprecedented that so many people can change their residences within such a short space of time,” Mthimkhulu said in the letter.
The IFP said it was requesting the IEC attend to the objection with urgency.
IFP secretary in the King Cetshwayo District, Tobias Gumede said that after the voters’ registration weekend they had noticed that 686 people had registered to vote and out of that, 586 had registered on that weekend online.
He said the objection made to the IEC was in terms of the Electoral Act.
He added that all parties had had until October 31 to put through objections and that they did so in time to avoid any chaos that could result due to the irregularities.
Gumede said as a party they had no fears of the objection causing any delays, as the IEC by law had to respond by November 4: “We want the IEC to do justice and investigate this ‘fraud’ and remove these people from the voters’ roll,” he said.
IEC KZN spokesperson, Thabani Ngwira said the objection was received on Monday and was still with the commission.
Reacting to the objection lodged, ANC KZN spokesperson Mafika Mndebele said the party was not aware of the issue.
He added that the party was not involved in any wrong-doing.
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