Former minister of finance Desmond van Rooyen during the state of the nation debate on Tuesday. Picture: TREVOR SAMSON
Former minister of finance Desmond van Rooyen, right, during the state of the nation debate on Tuesday. Picture: TREVOR SAMSON

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CO-OPERATIVE Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Desmond van Rooyen is confident that this year’s municipal election will be held within the prescribed period, before August.

However, a Constitutional amendment would be needed to delay the polls should the constitutionally defined date for the polls to be held 90 days after the expiry of the current terms of office of councillors, be missed.

Last November the Constitutional Court ordered that the controversial Tlokwe municipal by-elections be rerun because there were irregularities with the voters’ roll. At issue was that many voters did not supply addresses when registering as voters.

This was followed earlier this week by a finding from the Electoral Court that the problems in Tlokwe were still not sorted out, and ordered that this week’s by-election be postponed. The Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) complied and postponed all municipal by-elections until a solution that addressed impasse was found.

The big problem is that millions of voters in informal settlements and in the deep rural areas do not have formal addresses involving street names and numbers.

Mr van Rooyen told a news conference held by the governance cluster of ministers that there was concern about the effect of the Electoral Court order, because his department had much work to do to ensure a free and fair local government election. But, he said both the court order and the constitutional 90-day period would be complied with.

However, a highly-placed source who declined to be named, said the issue was of considerable concern because the task of organising addresses for the millions of voters without them was an almost insurmountable task.

He said a ray of hope was that the Constitutional Court had included "particularity" in its order, meaning that if an informal settlement dweller could accurately describe where he or she lived, it was acceptable in the absence of a formal address.

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba, fielding questions during the briefing, said these reversals should not be allowed to call into question the credibility of the IEC, which remained an institution of integrity and impartiality. He said the problems that had been found were administrative: "I am not worried about the credibility of the IEC, which has postponed in order to comply with the court order."

He said what was of concern to his department was that there were about 200,000 uncollected smart ID cards. Usually uncollected identity documents were destroyed but these would not be destroyed until after the election, in case voters needed them for voter registration.

Mr Gigaba said: "Government urges all eligible South Africans to register during the dates designated by the IEC. South Africans who do not have the identity documents (IDs) are urged to apply now at the nearest Home Affairs offices, and those that have already applied are requested to collect them.

"All Home Affairs offices will be open from 8am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday, which is in line with the operating hours of the IEC, for the two days, to provide for those citizens who need IDs to enable them to register to vote during the local government elections later this year. Our officials are ready to deliver services to those who require IDs and temporary identification certificates."