IEC Q1 & 2 2023/24 Performance; Voter Registration Progress Report; Committee Legacy Report; with Deputy Minister

Meeting report

Voter registration progress report

Mr Thomas Sigama, Deputy Director-General (DDG): Civic Services, Department of Home Affairs (DHA), gave a progress report on the voter registration over the weekend.

Services rendered by the DHA during the voter registration weekend included:

• Facilitating the application and collection of green bar-coded identity document (ID) books and smart identity cards (SIDCs) by applicants.
• Issuance of temporary identity certificates (TICs) (online verified).
• Resolving challenges pertaining to duplicates, amendments, rectifications and dead-alive cases, with the required supporting documents.
• Manual verification of TICs.

During the voter registration weekend, on average, 288 offices were opened -- 293 on 18 November and 284 on 19 November. More than 1 343 staff worked to provide services to clients. Over the weekend, 84 mobile units were deployed on Saturday, and 78 mobile units on Sunday. Services rendered over the weekend included:

• SIDC collection (9 312);
• SIDC applications (8 832);
• TIC issuance (993);
• Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) referrals which were assisted (94);
• Green ID book collections (842);
• Green ID book applications (195).

(Further details can be found in the presentation attached.)

Voter registration weekend statistics

Mr Mosotho Moepya, Chairperson, IEC, gave a presentation on the statistics from the voter registration weekend. The outline of the presentation was as follows:

• The Electoral Commission interacted with 2.9 million voters during the two-day registration weekend.
• The total registration activity over the two days was 2 904 037. Eligible citizens registering for the first time were 568 374. This accounted for 19.57% percent of total registration activity. Voters who re-registered in the same voting district were 1.4 million, and those who re-registered in a different voting district were 929 564 million.
• Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape recorded the three most registration transactions. The provincial breakdown was:

Gauteng: 610 948

KwaZulu-Natal: 559 933

Eastern Cape: 516 547

Limpopo: 332 557

Mpumalanga: 225 074 

Western Cape: 227 620

North West: 184 902

Free State: 173 612

Northern Cape: 72 844

• The voter’s roll now had 26.8 million voters, which was an increase from 26.3 million before the registration weekend. The province of Gauteng continued to be inhabited by most of the country’s population and the largest voting block, with 6.2 million registered voters.
• Young persons in the age category 16-29 accounted for 445 089, or 78.31%, of the new 568 374 voters.

The well-entrenched trend of there being more females on the voters' roll continued. Of the new registrations, 298 500 (52.52%) were females.

(Further details can be found in the presentation attached.)

IEC first and second quarter performance report

Ms Dawn Mbatha, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), IEC, reported on the performance and expenditure for the first two quarters of the 2023/24 financial year.

The key activities of the Commission as they prepared for the 2024 national and provincial elections included:

Preparing for the first national registration weekend held on 18 and 19 November 2023.

• Recruitment and training of expansion and electoral staff.
• Updating and preparing voter management devices and electoral systems.
• Procurement of voting station infrastructure and support for the November registration weekend.
• Procurement of registration materials and the required warehousing.
• Production of advertising campaigns.
• Increased civic and democracy education.

With a budget of over R3.8 billion, the Department had four programmes planned for the 2023/24 financial year, with 14 performance targets (only nine related to Q1 and Q2), and two national registration events. It had achieved 100% of all its targets for all programmes in both quarters.

The Department had budgeted about R405 million for quarter 1, and about R542 million for quarter 2, of which 91% had been used in both quarters. The under-expenditures were due to delays in filling vacancies in the Department.

(Further details can be found in the presentation attached.)

Discussion

Ms L van der Merwe (IFP) congratulated both the DHA and IEC for their great work over the weekend. She wanted to know whether any of the registration stations had to be closed due to the protests that were happening in some areas. Why were some of the voting registrations done in an offline mode? Was it due to an unstable network, or load-shedding? Would the IEC be able to sustain the level of the media campaign they held during the registration weekend and the days leading up to it until the voting day? What exactly were the vacant positions and labour issues that had led to the 9% underspending? What impact did the pending changes in the electoral legislation have on the preparation of elections?

Ms A Khanyile (DA) raised a point about a few offices being offering green bar-coded IDs, and those offices being far from where some citizens lived, and wanted to know how far the DHA was with the process of issuing smart card IDs to naturalised citizens. There had apparently been several calls about network failures at the DHA, and she wanted to know what the cause of this was. The Deputy Minister had indicated that there was a glitch on Saturday, especially in Gauteng, because the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) had been updating the system. Was the system updating finalised, and did this mean they would not hear about any system interruptions going forward? The DHA had said cases of dead/alive persons had been resolved -- was the Department confirming only that the voters were alive or deceased, or were there cases where somebody had been declared dead while alive? How many of these cases were resolved over the weekend, and how many cases were there still to be resolved?

Ms Khanyile said there had been protests in ward 4 due to people’s frustrations with the IEC’s voting district (VD) demarcation rules, and she wanted to know how it was planning to deal with the situation. What was the cause of the online system’s glitch on 19 November, and had it been resolved? She encouraged the IEC to give employment opportunities to unemployed graduates over the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) members. How many more new registrations could realistically be expected before the next election, given the 2% increase from the weekend registrations? The IEC had stated that just above 40 000 face-to-face outreach programmes had been done -- in which provinces or regions were these conducted?

Mr K Pillay (ANC) said that they had been preaching about reaching out to young people to register for a while, and the reported increase in the number of new registrations from young people must be commended. What was the contingency plan for the VDs that had no electricity during the weekend registrations?

Mr A Roos (DA) emphasised the need for the DHA to be open every Saturday. He said it had been reported that people had applied for smart IDs, and so had to be given temporary IDs, but had then been turned away due to the system being offline. He wanted to know how this was possible and what people should do if this happened the day before the elections. He advised the IEC to find high quality tents that could withstand strong winds, as there were reports of tents being blown away by the wind at some registration stations in Tshwane. It had been reported that only 30% of registrations were done online using the voter management device (VMD) due to load-shedding and connection issues. Was this completely at the discretion of the presiding officers, or would they order them to move offline after a certain period of a connection issue next time? He wanted clarity on why there were reports of people being denied registering at stations far from where they stayed, when the IEC had given an assurance that anyone could register at any station. What had caused the online platform to be offline between 11am and 7pm on Sunday, and what was being done to address this, given that the same thing had happened in 2021?

Mr Roos said the IEC's deputy CEO of electoral operations had confirmed to the Committee that the online voter registration system for voters abroad was ready to accept registrations for the weekend, but it had failed to go live and was reportedly in the final stages of being launched. Why had the Portfolio Committee been told that the application was ready to launch? And if some regulations were dependent on the Constitutional Court judgment, why were Home Affairs and the IEC not splitting the regulations, finalising those that allowed people to register, and then finalising those that related to the Constitutional Court's judgment later? When would the IEC have the finalised list of voting stations abroad? Should only countries where there were foreign missions have voting stations? What happened to voters in countries where this was not the case? Did the online availability of the VMD factor into the target of 90% of network and application systems' availability? What preparations for the elections were being delayed due to the consequential amendments of the electoral laws that had not yet been processed? What were the possible implications if the electoral laws consequential amendment bill was not completed in time for the elections?

Adv B Bongo (ANC) was concerned about the amendment bill that still had to be finalised, and asked the Department to at least reassure the Committee that this would be sorted out before the elections. Was this the last voter registration?

The Chairperson asked that the reported underspending be explained in detail. What measures were being taken going forward with SITA and the ongoing network issues? He felt that the issue of the Department of Home Affairs being open on Saturdays should really be considered, because most South Africans were available to seek help mainly on weekends.   

Responses

Mr Sigama, on the issue of smart IDs for naturalised citizens, responded that they had started the process of developing the system and notified most of the affected people.

They had not received any cases of dead/alive people during the voter registration weekend, but had encountered 49 cases of duplicates and amendment cases. He explained that the system maintenance with SITA had lasted only three hours, so they had been able to continue with the services. He said the Department was unable to issue TICs offline because a system was needed to verify people online and ensure everything was in order on the system, so they had to communicate with service providers when system interruptions happened.

He said that prior to the voter registration weekend, the Department had a huge volume of traffic received from service providers and the people benefiting from the system, which was clogging the system. The Department had had to return to the drawing board, perform load-balancing and settle some of the received bulk verifications, and then allow the incoming traffic to be received and processed later in the evening.

Responding to the plea for Home Affairs to open on Saturdays, he said the Department would first have to talk to the unions about operating on Saturdays.

Mr Njabulo Nzuza, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, explained that the system update/maintenance by SITA had resulted in the live capture not working. The IEC would be writing a letter to SITA, demanding that action be taken since it had been told that the maintenance was unnecessary and would hinder some services. He agreed they wanted to remain open on Saturdays, but their obstacle had been with labour. He promised to continue the conversations with labour.

He said that the media campaigns would continue to run because they helped promote participation by the citizens in democracy. In fact, the scope of the media campaigns would be broadened to focus on issues around early-bird registrations and lowering the number of the 130 000 first time issues. He assured the Committee that they would soon make a groundbreaking announcement regarding naturalised citizens. 

Mr Moepya said that when the IEC had said the online voter registration system for voters abroad was ready, they had been referring to the work being done regarding registrations, but had been clear about their anxiety regarding the court judgment. They had been very clear with the court that they needed the judgment by September, and had asked the Committee to perhaps advise on what to do going forward, other than impugn the dignity of the court, as this was where the constraint was.

Regarding the SADTU, the IEC had recruited 69 718 people for the weekend voter registration, and only 6 307 were teachers. It would be incorrect to say all teachers were members of SADTU. Of the 69 000 people recruited, more than 35 640 of them were youths under the age of 35.

He emphasised that the number of registrations of people in the age bracket of 16 to 29 had been 73%, and he thought this should be commended.

The IEC did not own properties -- they used the infrastructure communities had, which were sometimes already booked for funerals, weddings etc. He agreed that some of the temporary stations the IEC had used were destroyed by the strong winds over the weekend, but thought the focus should be on how quickly the IEC had reacted.

He responded that South African citizens in countries where South Africa did not have missions could not be helped with voter registration, because the law did not allow this.  

Mr Sy Mamabolo, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), IEC, said that the online registration portal had registered 140 000 people on 18 November, and Mr Roos had been correct in saying there was a dip on Sunday. This was caused by the mapping interface- it was taking longer to process transactions, and the solution was found only later in the day, and the portal was now fully functional. They were still investigating why the drag in processing had happened, to ensure it did not happen during the next voter registration weekend. He confirmed there was a plan to go back for the people who could not complete their registrations.

Referring to the online registration portal overseas, he said the holdup involved the software input that developers believed would ensure the portal operated smoothly. It had been sourced, and they hoped to have it later in the week. Similarly, there would be a registration weekend for citizens abroad in the new year.

He clarified that the use of the phrase ‘offline mode’ in the VMD was not because the VMD could not operate, but may be because when the transaction hit the database, there were delays in the processing. If that happened, the VMD would move to offline. Similarly, there may be a dip in the access point network (APN), so the offline was created to improve the voter registration process --whether the machine was offline or online, one could record the transaction. The IEC staff were trained to know that when the machine took too long to respond, they should proceed in the offline mode.

The VD boundaries should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis to determine whether it was a ward boundary or a VD delimitation issue. If it was a ward boundary, there was little that the IEC could do because that fell within the purview of the Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB). If it was a VD boundary, it could be looked at again before the second voter registration weekend.

Could the IEC sustain the media campaign? Their funding was event-driven, so there would be a similar campaign for the next voter registration weekend, but the available funding was not meant for a perpetual campaign. However, an educational profile in the media would be continued.

Regarding the SADTU, Mr Mamabolo said it should be noted that this was a call against teachers, merited or not, but what would happen when another call of this nature was made against another group that was part of the IEC staff? The voting station required some level of supervisory and management experience, and though a graduate may be brilliant, the position needed people who had been exposed to management experience. There needed to be a balance between the imperative of giving exposure to the unemployed or using experienced people; otherwise they ran the risk of meeting the popular demand, but giving poor performance. This was also a constitutional issue. People had the right to associate, and section 5 reads: “No person may discriminate against an employee exercising any of the rights conferred in terms of the act,” the right being association.

Ms Mbatha said that all the provinces were covered regarding the face-to-face outreach programmes.

Mr Roos wanted clarity on whether the overseas registration portal was waiting for a software issue or regulations, and why people were being denied registration at certain stations.

Mr Mamabolo responded that the advice that the regulations should be split was welcomed, and would be implemented -- they just wanted to align the readiness of the portal launch with the publication of the regulations. The only problem left was to deal with the software. He agreed with Mr Roos that anyone could register anywhere on the VMD, and it should not have happened that people had been turned away.

Closing remarks

The Chairperson thanked the IEC and DHA teams for their good work. He said the Minister was currently presenting both the electoral matters and amendment bill in the Cabinet sub-committee and other bills that had to be tabled for the Committee to interact with. He felt that the Commissioner had responded in a manner that had comforted the Committee, and the Party Liaison Committee (PLC) had also interacted with most of the issues. The Committee was fully grounded on the process the DHA had undertaken to recruit all citizens to participate and facilitate in assisting Parliament and the IEC to execute the electoral process. It had trust in the work that the PLC and the IEC would undertake to work closely to deal with some of the issues that would arise.

Committee's Legacy Report

Mr Adam Salmon, Committee Content Advisor, went through the draft Legacy Report, which had been revised since the Committee’s April/May [strategic planning] meeting.

The Chairperson suggested that Committee Members be given more time to go through it to ensure that everyone had a sense of the priority issues, and it could then be finalised at the next meeting.

He asked the Members for advice on how to deal with the issue of the electoral panel’s names, which the Minister was supposed to brief the Committee on today, but had been delayed.

Ms Van der Merwe suggested that the Minister brief the Committee at the next meeting if possible, as they had only two meetings left for the year.

The Committee supported this.

Adoption of minutes

Ms Van der Merwe moved the adoption of the minutes of 7 November, and it was seconded by Mr Pillay.

Mr Pillay moved the adoption of the minutes of 14 November, and was seconded by Ms van der Merwe.

Both sets of minutes were adopted.

The meeting was adjourned.