More than 120 000 people in Mpumalanga registered or checked their registration status at various Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) stations on Saturday.
Provincial IEC chairman Steven Ngwenya told a News24 Correspondent on Sunday that the registrations took place at numerous villages, townships, suburbs and other areas.
"More than 120 000 came out from various areas within Mpumalanga to register and also check their names at the registration stations," said Ngwenya.
Ngwenya said they expect more people to register on Sunday.
He said registrations were also expected to take place at two stations that were closed in Marite between Bushbuckridge and Hazyview on Saturday due to protests.
"I went to Marite and then we came up with a plan involving the police and I also called our provincial officials to assist. "The stations are working now. We had police escorting us, we set up everything there because we have material. I left the station around 8am and we believe people will go register while we monitor the results," said Ngwenya.
He said the stations would remain open until 17:00.
He conceded there had been some challenges, which included "untrained" political party agents.
"I do not know why we have that problem. The IEC in South Africa now has got what we call political parties liaison committees... where the IEC meets with political parties at national, provincial and municipal level, and we also conduct legislative workshops to bring them up to speed with our legislation.
"The... leaders understand the legislation, but the problem is that when the event comes, they then have to deploy party agents and in most cases those party agents are not properly trained. "So people go there to take chances at the stations and think that they can decide how [to] run things. We do things according to legislation," said Ngwenya.
Source: News24
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