/ 5 February 2009

We are ready for elections, says IEC

Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) chairperson Brigalia Bam said the IEC would be ready to stage general elections on April 15, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio reported on Thursday.

”We have been able, as the IEC, to follow very strictly, with precision, the dates in which we have to be ready and that is according to our Constitution — which is the 15th of April, and we are ready, definitely, on that day,” Bam told the public broadcaster, but stopped short of officially announcing the election date.

President Kgalema Motlanthe is widely expected to announce the date for general elections this year at the opening of Parliament on Friday.

Meanwhile, the IEC on Wednesday denied asking the African National Congress (ANC) to stay out of Nongoma.

”The IEC does not interfere with or give instructions to any political party in South Africa on where they should or should not campaign,” Bam said at the launch of a survey on voter participation at Gallagher Estate in Midrand.

”When parties decide they want to campaign they make their own arrangements, they book their own halls … the security and all those arrangements of any campaign are out of our control.”

She was responding to a question on whether the IEC had called ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe requesting the ANC not to campaign in Nongoma as it was an Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) stronghold.

Mantashe on Tuesday said he had received the call from the IEC.

”Somebody from the IEC called me and said ‘please don’t go to IFP strongholds …’, and I said ‘what do you mean IEC?’,” he said.

Bam said the ”discussion” with Mantashe was ”taken out of context”.

It followed clashes between ANC and IFP supporters in Nongoma in KwaZulu-Natal on Sunday when the ANC held a rally in the area. Three ANC members were shot and wounded, allegedly by IFP supporters. — Sapa