David Shapshak
You can’t help feeling as if someone is on the verge of saying: “Houston, we have a problem.”
The main auditorium of the Pretoria showground has been commandeered by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and transformed into a hi-tech election nerve centre, complete with the buzz akin to Nasa-like rocket launches.
More accustomed to hosting the annual Pretoria Fair, where cattle auctions and dog shows are common, the showground looks like the control centre for a space shuttle launch.
Rows of computers face two huge screens displaying the election results, tabulated into national and provincial returns, that would otherwise be tracking a satellite’s trajectory.
Stretching out in the main auditorium are some 600 computers where busy IEC technicians are inputting, collating, checking and verifying election results from around the country.
The operation is equivalent to a medium- to large-sized bank, using around 3 000 desktop computers and a leading-edge satellite system to relay and process the computer data.
The information technology infrastructure that powers the election results is impressive, to say the least. The idea for the centre was gleaned from Australia, but improved on tremendously, says one of the consultants who worked on its organisation.
It begins at the polling station, where votes are counted, then phoned through to the Pretoria results centre. It is also taken to the local electoral officer, where it is both faxed and “captured” in digital form. The data is then uploaded via 450 satellite dishes, downloaded and relayed to the results centre.
The information is “verified” using three information media: the phone call, fax and digital data.
Setting up the 12 000m2 results centre required an extra cellular tower and a microwave tower, used for high power telecommunications transmissions, as well as 2 000 telephone lines, 120 fax lines and 30km of computer cable.
The satellite-based wide area network that the entire country-system uses is advanced enough to run a medium-sized business. It is an innovative stroke, freeing the IEC’s communication infrastructure from any telecommunications problems that might befall it, and extending its reach into the country’s rural heartland where phone lines are a rarity.
But almost two years before the showground got its hi-tech look, the IEC began mapping the country using another sophisticated satellite technology. The Global Information System software package was originally developed in South Africa and the IEC set out dividing, or delimiting, the country into about 14 500 voting districts, where the voters would cast their ballots.
Howard Sackstein, the IEC executive director responsible for the election centre and the results, said: “This is the largest logistic operation the country has ever seen. To keep track of 261 000 staff in nearly 15 000 centres, is such a difficult task. It seems to have worked remarkably well.”
As ever in South Africa, the ironies abound. Next to the centre is the Skilpad Saal (Tortoise Hall), the site of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging leader Eugene Terre’Blanche’s historic address in 1989 to 6 000 people, and is usually home to the local wrestling fraternity.
“Ventersdorp, we have a problem,” doesn’t quite have the same ring.
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