Inside Report with Basch: Ready to register

Every week I find myself engaged in conversations over the ills of our society and governments lack of service delivery. What surprises me every time is when I ask have you registered, how many people say no. Well we can debate the problems till the cows come home but if we are not prepared to do anything about it, it becomes a moot conversation. So here we go – this is my advice for the election period.

Firstly on the weekend of November 9 and 10 all the voting stations will be open for registration between 08:00 and 17:00. All you need is your green barcoded ID and the process is relatively simple and shouldn’t take too long.

So who should register? Well obviously if you haven’t registered to vote or haven’t voted before, you should register. All the young adults over 18 must register. If you have moved house since the 2011 local elections then you need to re-register at the closest station. To check if you are registered you have two options you can get the DA to help by sending your id number via sms to 43165 at 50c an sms or you can sms your ID to the IEC at 32810 at R1 per sms.

So why register? Well Quite simply Gauteng is going to be hotly contested and it could foreseeably come down to 1 vote that decides the fate of the province, so if you say what effect will your vote have, in this case it could be the winning vote.

Secondly come Election Day, go and vote – get your family to vote, your friends to vote. Make a day out of it, have a voting day get together and go and stand in the queue together. Make it an exciting experience because it is exciting! You have a chance to change our country, and we all know that is sorely needed. So that’s my advice, register and vote.