16 May 2019

South Africa’s 2019 elections have come and gone and what remains now is SADC formal declaration regarding conduct on the elections.

The preliminary statement from SADC Election Observer Mission has, among other things, called for the introduction of modalities to increase the representation of women as candidates and in elected offices and for government to consider amending the Municipal Elections Act to ensure that Municipal by-elections do not take place during the National and Provincial Elections.

Botswana Head of the SADC Observer Missions (SEOM), and former International Affairs and Cooperation minister, Mr Phandu Skelemani gave the South Africa Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) the thumbs up for the manner in which the elections were conducted.

The SEOM mission was to observe the May 8 national and provincial elections, which in Mr Skelemani’s view were orderly and within the requirements of the legal framework of South Africa and also in accordance with the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. Mr Skelemani said the Botswana team that comprised former MP for Gaborone Bonnington South, Mr Botsalo Ntuane and Office of the President’s corporate services deputy manager, Mr Jeremiah Senabye that arrived in South Africa three days prior to the elections saw no activities that told of the big event ahead.

“The streets were very quiet, there were no star rallies or house-to-house campaigns prior to voting day as it is usually the case here at home,” he said.

Different party officials, he said, informed them that they resorted to President Barack Obama’s campaign of social media that included the use of sites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, along with other social media platforms such as podcasting and mobile messaging.

They dubbed it ‘dry campaign’. At Limpopo region, where Mr Skelemani was deployed to, residents of Vuwani boycotted the election, citing government’s refusal to reincorporate their area into the Makhado Local Municipality following the delimitation exercise and poor service delivery, among other reasons.

“The only people who might have voted at Vuwani are those who voted during the special voting dispensation that was conducted two days before, for people living with disabilities, bed-ridden and the elderly or those that have applied for that dispensation with valid reasons,” he said.

Mr Skelemani said Vuwani residents also refused to give IEC their facilities for voting for fear that public property would be vandalised, but noted that IEC had contingency plans in the form of tents for those willing to vote. Even in the midst of all these, he said the atmosphere was peaceful.

Mr Skelemani said the mission also observed that there was fragmentation of political parties in South Africa, with 48 parties with differing ideologies contesting. “I guess the fragmentation is due to the envisaged funding of political parties that will be participating in Parliament and provincial legislatures,” he said.

Meanwhile, BOCONGO executive director, Mr Botho Seboko has appealed to the IEC to consider roping in civil society organisations and other citizen observer groups as part of the elections observer mission so that in the end, they could share notes on the health of democracy.

Mr Seboko, who was part of the civil society groups’ observer mission under the Election Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Southern Africa said under funding of IEC also discouraged them to be nobel to the ideals that could ensure that elections were credible and transparent.

He said during the 2014 general elections in Botswana, there were only four government-oriented observer missions while South Africa had 18, including citizen observer groups.

This, he said was a lesson for Botswana to improve on during elections.

Mr Seboko also said South Africa had gone all out on voter education, adding, ‘their elections were fashionable and counting was conducted at polling stations compared to here where ballots are ferried to a counting centre.”

“There is nothing as good as getting results on spot rather than delaying, which sometimes opened room for complaints,” he said. ENDs