The Ward Committee Elections (WCE) was administered for the first time by the Stakeholder Relations Management (SRM) Department in the Office of the Speaker.
This was a daunting task with challenges and was accomplished with very limited resources. The IEC could not assist with these elections and participated in an advisory role.
Our approach was to administer the elections in three phases by implementing the following:
- Regions A and E which is mainly in the Northern parts of the city was scheduled for January 28.
- Regions B, C, and F next during February 4.
- Regions D and G which includes Soweto to Orangefarm was completed on February 11.
During the first phase, we had challenges that included, landlords not opening the venues, receiving material late and other logistical issues, resulting in stations opening as late as 13h00.
Time was compensated by allowing a station to stay open late until all voters were present to cast their votes. The Last station closed at 21h00 on the evening of Saturday, January 28.
Notwithstanding these challenges, voters turned out in numbers to exercise their right to vote and participate in their city.
The elections that followed had a 100% improvement. All went well with exception of pockets of interference from political parties.
During the Elections Weekends, we managed to open a total of 285 Voting Station across the City.
A total number of 3822 Candidates contested 1288 positions whilst 62 portfolios were not contested resulting in us having to run supplementary elections. This is only 5% of portfolios not contested. This will be done locally during public meetings.
Duly elected candidates, (this where there is only one person contesting), was at 262 persons which are 19% of the total portfolios.
Issued by City of Joburg Group Communication & Marketing: Media Relations, Thembelihle Radebe.
For the latest news follow us on Facebook and Twitter or Westside News
