The IEC has an online address campaign where registered voters can provide, update or confirm their address details. In 2016, the Constitutional Court found that the IEC had failed to meet its obligations in collecting and maintaining addresses for registered voters since December 2003 and set the electoral body a target of 30 June 2018 to capture addresses of all registered voters.
According to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of 2017, released by Statistics South Africa, the unemployment rate stood at 27.7%.The expanded unemployment rate, which includes those who wanted to work but did not look for work, increased in Quarter Three of 2017 to 36.8%.
There are thousands of vacant posts in the public health sector as at the end September 2017. The largest number of vacancies by province are as follows: Gauteng (5 359), KwaZulu-Natal (5 177), North West (4 281), Free State (4 185), Mpumalanga (2 179), Western Cape (1 813) Northern Cape (980) and Limpopo (686). Data for the Eastern Cape was not provided.
The latest crime stats show that in 2016/17, the murder rate increased by 1.8%‚ with 19 016 people killed. Attempted murder rose by 0.4% to about 50 a day (18 205) while robberies with aggravating circumstances rose by 6.4%. Meanwhile, Gun Free SA says that between 18 and 21 of the 52 South Africans murdered every day are killed with guns. Elsewhere, it was recorded that a total of 2 778 073 firearms pertaining to private citizens, were registered on the Central Firearm Register data base, on 20 September 2017
The total number of teachers who are currently being funded by the Funza Lushaka bursary programme for primary school is 6 708 and high school is 8 419.
In 2016/17, Legal Aid SA provided increased legal advice and legal assistance in 767 656 matters (compared with 749 619 matters in 2015/16). This included 444 962 new legal matters (compared with 441 056 in 2015/16). A breakdown of these new matters is as follows: there were 385 972 new criminal matters (87%) and 58 990 new civil matters (13%).
During 2016/17, a total of 1 349 adoptions were registered which included 1 200 national adoptions and 149 inter-country adoptions.
In a written parliamentary reply, the Minister of Basic Education confirmed that 1 449 pupils in Grades 3 to 7 fell pregnant between 2014 and 2016.
SASSA has no record of illegal deductions from social grants. SASSA started recording the disputed deductions as from the 2015/16 financial year. The number of cases reported for each financial year were as follows: 21 728 in 2015/16, 109 781 in 2016/17 and 14 434 in 2017/18 (to date). The disputed deductions are for a number of products, including EFT disputes (for loan repayments), ATM disputes (where the ATM either did not give the money requested, declined the transaction or swallowed the card) and disputes related to the sale of pre-paid electricity and/or airtime. In resolving the disputes, SASSA arranges for the specific card to be blacklisted for future products (meaning that no more pre-paid products can be loaded to that specific card, and then refers the matter for investigation to be investigated by the service provider. Not all disputes result in refunds to the beneficiaries. The total value of refunds made for disputed deductions for the period April 2015 to 31 March 2017 is R2 037 715.
The NPA reported to Parliament that it achieved a high conviction rate during 2016/17. The overall conviction rate was at 94% - 91% at High Courts, 80% at Regional Courts and 96% at District Courts.
