Terry Tselane, former vice-chairperson of the Electoral Commission (IEC) and now executive chairperson of the Institute of Election Management Services in Africa, joins Eusebius McKaiser on his TimesLIVE podcast.
Looking ahead to the 2024 national elections, they discuss whether electoral processes in SA are beyond reproach or whether elections could conceivably be stolen.
Tselane starts by discussing a related issue: noncompliance with a landmark Constitutional Court judgment that mandated parliament to amend electoral laws to enable independent candidates to participate in national elections.
He argues, “it would be a crisis for the whole country” if the next election does not accommodate independent candidates. This, warns Tselane, would undermine the legitimacy of the elections.
The dilemma is that more than two years are required for the planning of a new system, operationally speaking, but the next election must take place sooner in terms of the constitutional mandate.
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McKaiser asks Tselane to explain, in basic terms, how the IEC plans and runs elections on voting day, and in the subsequent days when counting happens, how the votes are tallied and the results declared.
This leads to the crux of the podcast episode: whether elections can be rigged.
Tselane warns there are several ways in which elections could be rigged. He says it is important for staff at voting stations to be politically independent and impartial. Collusion between politicians who seek to interfere with the election results and pliant electoral staff would quickly lead to the integrity of the election processes being fatally wounded.
He also discusses the danger of gerrymandering, including voting roll manipulation, as a way to disenfranchise voters or manipulate boundaries to influence election outcomes. Tselane argues this is why a “consistent legal framework” is also necessary to ensure all the relevant rules and laws are uniformly applied.
However, he says, the sheer scale of the logistics mean that manipulation is possible, such as a deliberate attempt to slow the delivery of ballots in voting districts that are strongholds of political opposition.
Tselane insists “a legal transfer of power” from the ANC is likely should the ruling party lose the national elections. The number of people who run elections who would need to be compromised for elections to be stolen are too many. This is why he believes elections continue to be free and fair in SA.
The possible exception, he tells McKaiser, were the 1994 elections, which were declared “substantially” free and fair. He says they would not meet today’s standards of free and fair.
This episode will empower voters to better understand some fundamental aspects of elections management.
To listen to previous episodes, go here.
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