The African National Congress will use its majority in Parliament to ensure that the only South Africans overseas who can vote in next year’s general election are government officials and their families.
The organisation is insisting that priority should be given to ensuring that South Africans living in the country get to vote. On Thursday in Parliament, ANC home affairs chairperson Patrick Chauke called on all political parties to “take up the challenge to register” South Africans in the country. He added that overseas South Africans themselves had not shown interest in voting.
ANC MP Kgoloko Morwamoche said: “Nobody is prevented to vote [sic]. They [those overseas] can make arrangements. Nobody is preventing them from coming down here.”
Earlier this week Chauke dismissed claims of gerrymandering, pointing out that more than 300 000 ID documents remained uncollected at home affairs offices. In contrast only a handful of a thousand South Africans abroad had voted in June 1999.
Ilona Tip of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa points out that the exclusion of expatriates will in all likelihood not affect who governs the country because the ANC will most likely easily win the election. “But it will definitely affect the number of seats each party will receive in Parliament and various parties will argue that they would have received additional seats if South Africans who are overseas were allowed to vote,” she adds.
But it is difficult to say which parties will be most affected. Presently home affairs officials do not even have figures for the number of South Africans who are overseas.
However, the Electoral Laws Amendment Bill — before the National Assembly this Friday — may yet land in the Constitutional Court. The Freedom Front and the African Christian Democratic Party have renewed threats of legal action if the legislation is adopted.
The dispute comes as MPs break for a six-week recess ahead of the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) first voter registration weekend, which starts on November 8.
Without the new election legislation the IEC cannot register new voters, including awaiting-trial prisoners.
The poll is widely expected in April 2004 to coincide with the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the first democratic election. Already MPs are spending increasing periods in their constituencies.