EDITORIAL | For SA’s sake, IEC must heed Moseneke and delay local polls

The numbers behind a free and fair election in a nation where more than 40 million people are eligible to vote have always been staggering. In the midst of a pandemic fuelled mainly by indoor gatherings, they become terrifying.

If local government elections were to be held as planned on October 27, they would require, first of all, a massive push to register nearly 15 million of those people as voters. As things stand, that would involve opening more than 23,000 voting stations at the end of this month, in the midst of Covid-19’s third wave.

Then there would be the campaigns and, even if regulations limited political gatherings, you can be sure they would be defied, creating the potential for superspreader events all over the country.

Finally, there would be voting day, another invitation to millions of people to do exactly what they have been discouraged from doing for 16 months: spend lengthy periods in queues, before gathering in a room and touching surfaces recently traversed by hundreds of strangers.

All these numbers have been occupying former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke’s magnificent brain since May 20, when the Independent Electoral Commission asked him to make recommendations within two months on whether the elections should go ahead as planned.

His conclusion, in a comprehensive 120-page report that leaves one mystified, yet again, that Moseneke was overlooked for the job of chief justice, is that a postponement is inescapable if the IEC wishes to prevent a repeat of what happened in the US late last year, when unconscionable numbers of Covid-19 deaths were linked to the presidential election.

In the jurist’s words: “Our recommendation is that the elections be deferred only once, and to the earliest possible date, to be determined as the safest and shortest time within which [they] may be held without excessive loss of life.”

In Moseneke’s considered opinion, the deferment should not go beyond the end of February 2022, by which time it is hoped millions of voters will have been vaccinated and community immunity will have been established. This is the recommendation the IEC will spend the next few days mulling over before announcing its decision.

The primary consideration for Moseneke and his small team of four lawyers was that the elections — to choose 4,468 councillors in eight metros, 205 local councils and 44 district councils — should be free and fair. This is “the golden standard of our electoral project”, he said.

His conclusion was that the effect of the pandemic and its attendant regulations meant this would be impossible. But he wasn’t blind to the consequences of allowing the councillors elected in August 2016 to carry on running local government into the ground.

He referred to auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke’s annual report on the 257 municipalities, released on June 30, and said it found that “the decline in the affairs of local government has been consistently reported by the auditor-general over the past four years of the current administration”.

Moseneke added: “The auditor-general’s report concludes with a clarion call for ethical and accountable leadership to drive the desired changes to bring about an improved local government.

At a local government level, SA is due for a reset and, ordinarily, local government elections would be that reset button.

—  Former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke

“These are powerful considerations that ordinarily should militate against deferment of elections. At a local government level, SA is due for a reset and, ordinarily, local government elections would be that reset button. We acknowledge that elections should be held soon. But it cannot be at any cost.

“The nearest point of safety will be February 2022, when there is likely to be a high level of community immunity. The postponement should be no longer than is strictly and reasonably necessary to save lives and limbs.”

In reaching his conclusion, Moseneke heard testimony from some of SA’s most formidable epidemiologists and medical scientists, as well as political parties and representatives of civil society. He also studied more than 3,000 submissions from members of the public.

In reporting so quickly and comprehensively, he has done the nation an important service. The IEC will ignore his sage advice at its peril.