Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

Maintaining impartiality is a vital aspect of the mammoth task Pansy Tlakula, a former member of the SA Human Rights Commission, has to fulfil, writes Fiona Forde

One of the country’s biggest logistical operations will go into full swing tomorrow when the elections get under way. Rain or shine, 19 700 polling stations are expected to open their doors at 7am to 23 million South Africans who have registered to cast their votes.

The process will be facilitated by the 205 000 electoral staff who have been appointed by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

It has taken 18 months and more than R800 million to get this far. “That’s the cost of democracy,” says Pansy Tla-kula, the woman who, as the IEC’s chief electoral officer, has kept her finger on the pulse these past few months to ensure the operation runs smoothly. But given the nature of the mammoth task at hand, there is still a mountain of work to be done.

Though most polling stations will be housed in schools or other public structures, there are still hundreds of tents waiting to be erected today to serve as temporary polling stations around the country tomorrow.

“They can’t be erected any sooner for security reasons,” Tlakula explains.

It is also for security reasons that the ballot papers, ballot boxes, voting booths, marking ink, stamps, results slips and other stationery cannot be distributed until tomorrow morning. That goes for all polling stations, regardless of size.

And they vary, from the largest in the Joburg inner city, with more than 12 000 voters on its roll, to the smallest in the Northern Cape village of Benede, with just six.

The scale of this operation makes Tlakula’s one of the most stressful jobs there is. Yet she is confident she is on top of her job, though there are several factors that remain outside of her control.

At 7am tomorrow, she will be at the election results centre in Pretoria, waiting for polling day to begin. As each of the polling stations open, the presiding officer will send an SMS to IEC headquarters. The SMS is captured on the computer system as an alert that that particular station is open and ready for voting.

Problems arise, however, when SMSes don’t arrive and the green lights don’t go on – such problems are intensified if the polling stations are in rural areas.

“Say it is in Meir, which is in the middle of nowhere, about 200km from Upington. If a voting station has not opened in Meir, I have to phone the provincial electoral officer in Kimberley. He then has to phone somebody in Upington, where our municipal electoral office is, and that person then has to drive to Meir to find out why the (station) is not open,” she explains.

It can and does happen. In 2004, not all polling stations were up and running until 11am. And Tlakula is prepared for the worst.

It could just as easily happen that some staff will walk off the job during the day.

“I’ve been there,” Tlakula says. “Some abandoned ship in 2006 during the night. They said it was too much work and just walked away.”

She’s also keeping an eye on the weather; poor conditions and heavy rains could make some roads impassable.

Though the SANDF is on standby to dispatch helicopters, it is something that could adversely affect voter turnout, which Tlakula is anticipating to be about 80 percent.

Electricity supply is also a concern, particularly this year, given the added features in the IEC’s electronic system.

For the first time, each station’s results slips – which capture the parties’ performances at the national and provincial level – will be scanned into the system to help eliminate discrepancies or disputes.

Given that the electoral staff members will be hard at work throughout tomorrow and late into the night, Tlakula is anticipating a “rush on the system” early on Thursday morning to compute the results through to the Pretoria base, and she can only hope that the bandwidth will hold out and the lights will stay on.

It’s a risk, but one she is happy to take as it adds to the transparency of the process. Updating the system came with a price tag of R83m. “That’s the cost of transparency.”

Counting up to 23 million votes is no mean feat, but she is adamant she has a system in place that is robust and rigorous enough to do an accurate count.

“We have developed it in such a way that it can flag any exceptions,” she says.

Such anomalies might include a station throwing out a final tally of 4 000 votes where only 200 voters are registered. “Or if the ANC gets 200 votes for the national and only gets 20 for the provincial. Then the norm says there’s usually consistency between the national and the provincial, that voting patterns are consistent. Then something that we call an issue tracker flags it and it will be raised… with the polling station” and a recount begins.

As the count continues, it will be scrutinised by independent auditors and political parties. It’s only when that period lapses, and when each dispute has been adjudicated, that the IEC will be able to call the election, though the overall picture will have started to emerge from the screens at the results centre.

Tlakula, a human rights lawyer by training and a former member of the SA Human Rights Commission, joined the IEC in 2002. She has been through two elections – the 2006 municipal elections and the 2004 general elections.

“Every election is different,” she says, “but this one has largely been defined by political intolerance.” That said, she is not anticipating any major intolerance or violent outbreaks tomorrow.

“This country is not on fire. It will never be on fire again and it will never go back to pre-1994.” But she does warn the powers-that-be not to drop their guard until after the new president has been inaugurated.

In her years at the IEC, she has built up a good rapport with the various political parties, and her organisation is recognised as one of the most reputable in the country.

“That’s down to impartiality,” she says. “It’s about being independent. About applying the law equally to all the parties. And never cutting deals with anybody.”

Last week she was forced to fire 67 of her electoral staff when it emerged that they were also registered as party candidates. “It’s human nature,” she says. “They thought they could take the chance. The system caught up with them and we removed them as electoral staff.”

She remains tight-lipped about her own future at the IEC and whether she will see her 10-year contract through to the end. “I’m not thinking about it. I’m thinking about this election.”

Soon she will start focusing on the 2011 municipal elections. “That’s just the way it works around here.”