In preparation for the upcoming general and provincial elections, the Independent Electoral Commission has increased voting stations in Buffalo City Metro following a huge demand after the 2016 local government elections.
This was revealed by the commission’s BCM regional manager Kholiswa Bana during the stakeholders session held with councillors and traditional leaders at the East London City Hall on Monday.
The session was organised to inform the leaders about the metro’s state of readiness for the much-anticipated 2019 elections, which will take place on a date yet to be announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Bana said the commission had approved 13 new voting stations in the metro out of 27 proposals submitted after the 2016 elections.
“We have a total number of 412,116 registered voters. We now have 352 voting stations. During the 2016 local government elections we had 339 voting stations and we have since added more stations in communities where the requests were submitted and now we are sitting at 352 voting stations that will be open for national and provincial elections in BCM,” Bana said.
Bana said schools were still the largest venues used to vote, followed by community halls and tents.
While the commission was forging ahead with the plans, Bana said the metro was way behind the annual new registration target of 2,216 as only 404 new registrations were achieved this year.
Contributing to this was the lack of interest shown by hundreds of young people from the “predominantly black schools” in registering.
Pupils from “predominantly white schools” had registered when visited by the IEC.
“You can see that in Mzomhle [Mdantsane] we met with 83 pupils but in terms of registration it was zero. In Sakhikamva [Nompumelelo] we presented to 60 pupils and again zero learners were registered there,” he said.
“In Kingsridge High [King William’s Town] we met with 88 pupils and 16 pupils were registered.”
BCM home affairs department stakeholders forum coordinator Mzingisi Nokhele said the department faced a crisis with eligible voters who did not collect their IDs, both in their East London office and King William’s Town...