At the helm of this country’s toughest upcoming challenge — to synchronise, for a day, 20-million South Africans — are two stylish and savvy women.
Dr Brigalia Bam, the chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), and advocate Pansy Tlakula, IEC chief electoral officer, are easy-going and mild-mannered; and their conversation sparkles with epigrams. In the sterility of a blue-grey conference room in their Tshwane offices, Bam and Tlakula are both South Africa’s everyday women and the taskmasters pulling together South Africa’s elections.
”I think there is something about the way that we are socialised — I’m not talking about education — I am really talking about socialisation,” said Bam about female leaders. ”We are less hostile, we avoid power games and we don’t have the brazen, uncoded approach of the macho male.”
With 17 000 voting stations, 250 000 volunteers to manage them, about 140 political parties, and simmering violence in some provinces, Tlakula and Bam have so far coordinated the elections with a grace that has kept most naysayers silent.
”The tendency in most other countries is for the voter turnout at the first liberation election to be massive,” said Bam. ”As the years roll on, the electorate generally shows less and less interest. So for us to have more voters this year than we had in 1994 is very exciting.”
In 1994 about 19-million South Africans cast their vote. In 1999 this dropped to 17-million. On Thursday, the IEC said total registrations would number 20-million. This includes 3,5-million new registrations.
Of these, two million are female, compared with 1,5-million male. About 300 000 are between 18 and 19, 700 000 are 20 to 25, one million are 26 to 39, and 1,2-million new voters over the age of 40 will make their cross.
”I think the reason for this surge is a greater awareness, excitement and appreciation of our laws in South Africa,” said Bam. ”The reason I say this is that there were many grumblings in the beginning about voters having to apply for a common, bar-coded identification book. But they have realised that this document is a unifying factor — there is a sense of us as citizens having to respect our own laws.”
While the election hype will peak on the day of the vote, these women have been sweating behind the scenes since 2000, finalising the boundaries of the voting districts, balancing the opinions of each political party about these boundaries, and training the volunteers to handle ”every legal situation that arises at the voting stations”, said Tlakula.
Apart from these problems ”we’ve had some people who simply object to having their fingers printed for both religious and vanity reasons. Ladies just sometimes don’t like that ink, my goodness!” said Bam.
The task of drawing the boundaries for the voting stations is gargantuan. ”We have to ensure, through aerial photographs and new technology called the Global Positioning System, that not one of the 17 000 voting stations is straddled by a river, mountain, railway line or the Kruger National Park — you don’t want people to be eaten by lions on their way to vote,” said Bam.
As each South African voter prepares to affirm, decry or ignore the country’s leadership, these belles are at the centre of the competing ideas, ferment and debate of South African politics on the cusp of 10 years of freedom.