Voters say they were ‘robbed’ after not being able to cast their ballots

Continuous budget cuts to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) over the past four years seem to have hindered its ability to effectively run Wednesday’s general elections, as chaos unfolded at many voting stations in metropolitan areas.

The IEC’s budget has been shrinking, alongside other government departments including health care, social security and higher education.

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Despite being an election year, the budget for 2024-25 was reduced by R31 million from the amount projected in the medium-term expenditure framework a year before. In the previous medium-term budget cycle, there was a R250 million decrease.

Researcher at the Institute for Economic Justice Zimbali Mncube said there needs to be a form of accountability to people who could not cast their vote.

“What we saw is a manifestation of those budget cuts and the policy National Treasury has adopted.

“The implications of it were clearly articulated by the IEC when it was presented before the parliamentary committee on home affairs.

“They clearly stated this budget cut would have a significant impact on their ability to train staff or provide voter education, as we know it has previously done,” he said.

“The IEC said they couldn’t conduct workshops to train staff in terms of the new Electoral Amendment Act, which saw the introduction of the third ballot,” he added.

Voters were turned away from voting stations as they were unaware of a new requirement of the Act, which required people vote only at the voting station they were registered unless they had applied to vote elsewhere. Noluthando Mazibuko from Tsakane said she couldn’t vote because of Section 24a.

“I was prepared to vote but I was unable to because of the new law.

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“It is frustrating because there were a lot of us who got turned away and robbed of voting because we didn’t know – and even when tried to ask them to let us participate in the national ballot, they still refused,” she said.

“I know people who say they applied to change their voting stations but it appears that [the IEC] did not update their information on the system. Their system failed a lot of people,” she said.

In parts of the country, voting took longer with a third ballot and unreliable voter management devices, which resulted in lengthy lines at polling stations and voting continuing into the early hours of Thursday morning. Hlengiwe Nkosi, a voter in Soweto abandoned voting due to glitches.

“The lines were insanely long and … were not moving at all.

“We decided to leave because it felt like sabotage of some sort to a point that only people who were recognised by the IEC workers were able to skip the queue and go vote – they had friends who were working that day,” she said.

Mncube believed underfunding the important pillar of democracy should be reconsidered.

“We need to view the current situation, the socioeconomic conditions and the macroeconomic policies… There are alternative ways that can help us unlock resources [which] can be put towards entities such as the IEC,” he said