Minister Van Rooyen visiting Tlokwe to mobilise registered voters to provide addresses and verify their details on 9 – 10 July 2016
The Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, who is also the chairperson of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Elections, honourable Des van Rooyen will be visiting Tlokwe on 9 July 2016 together with other stakeholders to support the work of the Independent Electoral Commission.
The Minister’s visit on 9 July 2016 follows a successful one to the same area that took place on 7 July 2016. The Minister visited a number of households in Tlokwe accompanied by the officials of the Municipality and the IEC urging communities to visit their voting stations on 9 – 10 July 2016 to update their details on the voters roll, provide their addresses and also urged registered voters to go out on 3 August to vote. The coming Minister’s visit of Saturday, 9 July will therefore be building on the successful visit that he undertook on 7 July 2016.
The purpose of the Minister’s visit is to urge and encourage communities, especially registered voters in the Tlokwe area to come out in their numbers on Saturday, 09 July and Sunday, 10 July from 8am - 5pm to provide missing address details or to correct their address details on the voters’ roll so as to be able to vote in the coming local government elections.
“We therefore appeal to all stakeholders including media, community structures, political parties, candidates and others in Tlokwe and surrounding areas to assist in spreading the messages and encouraging the registered voters to visit their voting station this coming weekend, 9 – 10 July 2016”, said Minister van Rooyen. It is important to note that all voting stations will be opened on 9 - 10 July 2016.
This call for communities to verify their addresses in Tlokwe is in line with the judgment of Constitutional Court which amongst other ruled that the 2016 Municipal Elections may proceed on 3 August 2016 using the current certified voters’ roll – with the exception of Tlokwe. The court ordered EIC to ensure that they obtain addresses of all the registered voters in line with November 2015 Kham judgment and the subsequent ruling by the Electoral Court is implemented.
This call to provide addresses does not mean that the voters roll will reopened. This is instead a call to only those voters who have already registered to vote before the voters roll was closed.
“As government we will continue to support the implementation of the Constitutional Court decision to ensure that we ultimately have a complete voters roll with addresses”, said Minister van Rooyen.
The Minister reminded all South Africans that we all have the duty to ensure that the coming elections are free and fair and that all the registered voter have an opportunity to cast their ballots on elections day. “It is our duty as communities and all stakeholders to ensure that we a comprehensive and inclusive voters roll containing addresses of voters”, said Minister van Rooyen.
As CoGTA, we are encouraged to see that the IEC is already hard at work implementing the constitutional court judgement.
Enquiries:
Legadima Leso
COGTA – Communications
Cell: 083 378 9495
