Inmate voting hits new hurdle

2004-03-10 14:19

Cape Town - The national registration of prisoners for the forthcoming elections, which started on Wednesday, has met its first hurdle.

"We are with Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) members visiting Johannesburg prisons. (But) at the moment, not many prisoners are registering because a major problem is that they don't have the bar-coded IDs (identity documents)," said Correctional Services spokesperson Maupi Monyemangene on Wednesday.

Monyemangene said the problem was exacerbated by the "short time frame" given for prisoners to acquire IDs. This had led to "not a lot of people registering" at the start of the three-day registration process.

He said many prisoners did have the document, but had left it at home.

Monyemangene said about 70- to 80-thousand additional prisoners were eligible to vote following a Constitutional Court ruling last week that all categories of prisoners to be allowed to vote.

The IEC will register prisoners on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

In the Western Cape, IEC provincial electoral officer Reverend Courtney Sampson, was at the region's most populous prison, and third largest in the country, Pollsmoor, to register prisoners.

"The IDs have been a problem to a certain extent, but I saw quite a few prisoners applying for temporary ID certificates at the department of home affairs officials also present," he said.

Sampson said the "law was the law" and if prisoners did not make arrangements for their IDs to be brought to prison, then it was "tough luck".

He said he was very pleased by what he had seen at Pollsmoor, and the co-operation received by the Department of Correctional Services.

Meanwhile, IEC chief electoral officer Pansy Tlakula told Sapa there was "no question whatsover" of an extension to the three-day prisoner registration period.

"We have done our bit," she said, adding that the IEC had communicated to the prison authorities when they would be conducting registration in order to facilitate prisoners organising their IDs.

Tlakula said all the prisoner data would uploaded over the weekend into the IEC's databanks.

- SAPA