James Selfe, federal chairperson of the Democratic Alliance (DA), pointed out to doubtful voters on Tuesday that they do not have to be in their home province to vote. They can vote on the national ballot at any voting station in the country.
If they are away from home but still in the same province they can still vote at any voting station, he said, in both the national and provincial ballot.
Selfe also urged employers to recognise that voting day is a public holiday.
”If any employees are working on this day, we urge employers to give such employees sufficient time to enable them to vote in safety and comfort,” he said.
This point was made much more forcibly by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
A Cosatu statement said: ”Once again Cosatu condemns all employers who make workers work on 22nd April 2009.
”Workers must not be intimidated by anybody. The 22nd April 2009 is a public holiday, and all workers — in the farming sector, mining, manufacturing, textiles, transport, security, domestic workers, public sectors and many other sectors must be able to vote. No employer must stop workers excising their right to vote for their political party.”
Patrick Craven for Cosatu also issued an eve-of-poll message to unionists.
He said that the opposition parties ”made a mistake at the outset when they constructed their election strategy around the trumped-up charges against comrade Jacob Zuma.
With the dropping of charges by the NPA [National Prosecuting Authority], this strategy has been thrown back like a rotten egg on their face.”
In desperation, he suggested, the DA has ”gone back to the swaart gevaar tactics with their ‘Stop the Zuma two-thirds majority campaign’. Every time Helen Zille opens her mouth, and even when she tries to dance surrounded by her black boys and girls, she reminds us of the DA’s hypocrisy”.
”Their fear of the ANC’s two-thirds majority is the same old fear their apartheid forbears had of a ‘black’ government. It exposes the extent to which they are prepared to defend the white privileges they gained under apartheid.” — I-Net Bridge