ITS all system go as 2026 Local Government Elections preparations gets underway.
On Wednesday 4 November, nearly 29.2 million South Africans will put an X to vote, with 546 political parties contesting the polls.
Almost 137,000 candidates will be vying for just over 10,500 council seats.
This was revealed by the Independent Election Commission at a press briefing held at the IEC headquarters, Centurion last week.
IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepa said that the 32 political parties were initially excluded from participating in the upcoming local government elections would be included following the Constitutional Court ruling in favour of the ANC, recently.
On the 32 political parties, he said they all met requirements because they paid the election deposit to contest the 121 local municipalities and three ballot types (local, metro and district), but had failed to upload their final lists.
On preparations ahead of the voting next Wednesday, Moepya indicated IEC had already begun printing 27 million ballots out of the 33 million.
The 6.6 million were yet to be printed and that no financial losses had been incurred in respect of the six affected municipalities.
The IEC also announced its election results system is ready for the 4 November local elections following an audit process.
IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo, said issues identified during the audit process were fixed, he told media and political parties at the launch of National Results Operation center in Midrand.
“Naturally, findings were made during this audit process. Those findings have now been remediated, and the result system is hereby declared ready and fit for purpose.”
The Commission also made technical improvements on how election results are transmitted and deployed on the leader board.
“Technical optimizations have been implemented to ensure rapidity on the one hand and secure continuous and uninterrupted projection of results to the various leaderboards and other public channels such as the mobile app and the website,” he said.
During the 2024 National Elections, the election dashboard suffered a technical glitch.
This saw numbers on the leader board disappear for over an hour causing panic among some political parties.
However, at the time the IEC assured the nation that the technical glitch had not impacted the integrity of the results and that no data was lost.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Velenkosini Hlabisa says logistical, technical, and security arrangements are fully on track for next week’s elections.
Hlabisa, who chairs the inter-ministerial committee on local government, told the public broadcaster they have full confidence in the Electoral Commission.
“We had a meeting last week where IEC confirmed that they’re going to work on the available time to comply with the Constitutional Court judgment and are all ready to go,” Hlabisa said, referring to the apex court ruling in favour of the ANC in their legal pursuit to have 181 candidates’ names included in the local government elections ballot papers.
“We are ready to allow the people of South Africa to exercise their democratic right and elect new councillors.”
President Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa has also urged citizens to apply their democratic right by voting.
Image provided (Pres Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa recorded with Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Velenkosini Hlabisa.)
