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The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) in Limpopo praised observant residents who chased after its senior official transporting ballot boxes containing special votes without a police escort.
According to Limpopo provincial electoral officer Nkaro Mateta, the area manager was caught on Wednesday morning in the Elias Motsoaledi municipal region.
Mateta claimed residents saw the official transporting the ballot boxes.
“The area manager collected our boxes from secure storage, and when he tried to approach the first station to drop the special vote boxes, fortunately, our communities are alert… they realised that person was moving around with ballot boxes without an escort. They became suspicious and raised alarms.
“They chased after the area manager. In a panic, he stopped, dropped one of the boxes and disappeared. Fortunately, a police officer nearby confiscated the dropped box. That box was taken to the nearby police station,” said Mateta.
Mateta said they then notified the relevant people within the IEC about what happened.
“The incident surprised us. Ballot boxes can never be transported without being escorted by police or traffic officials. After receiving the news, we went to inspect whether the box had been tampered with.
“We invited political parties to the police station before we could inspect the ballot box. The box was found to be sealed. It was then taken to the relevant police station. The police tracked down the area manager, and ballot boxes were escorted to the affected voting station,” Mateta said.
Mateta added that they also needed help regarding some special voters, especially those who applied to vote in their homes.
“Our main worry was the home visits. Our teams worked until the late hours of Tuesday to reach out to all the applicants’ homes. When we closed for special votes on Tuesday, we had done 90Â 000 of the 160 00 that had applied.
“The greatest impact was those who had applied to visit voting stations [for special votes]. Our turnout at voting stations was less than 20 000 when we were expecting more than 60 000 voters. Most home visits who claimed we didn’t visit them, IEC can assure everybody that we visited all homes,” said Mateta.
Some applicants were not found at their homes. Mateta claimed they left notes at the homes of those applicants who couldn’t be found.