The Electoral Commission (IEC) will launch its communication campaign in Midrand, Johannesburg, on Tuesday. The focus of the campaign is to encourage young eligible voters to register for next year’s elections.
There are 26 152 855 South Africans registered on the voters’ roll. Be sure you are counted!
Register online today at https://t.co/QFgJgjwSXA for #SAelections24 pic.twitter.com/7fpqDzZJre
— IEC South Africa (@IECSouthAfrica) October 17, 2023
For the first time, independent candidates will be allowed to contest national and provincial elections.
The IEC has embarked on a drive to raise awareness of what this means for voters and contestants. It’s also providing information about the national registration weekend on the 18th and 19th of next month.
Deputy CEO of the IEC, Masego Shiburi explains, “We should be worried as a country about the underrepresentation of people in the age cohort 18 to 35. Consistent with the rest of the sub-Saharan continent we are increasingly a very young population, and we have an artificial representation of young people on the voter’s roll you will know that we do not use the term apathy to refer to young persons because we don’t think there is apathy on the young persons. We think they have had fewer disproportionate chances to register what we know though is that once registered the majority of them are likely to participate more than any age cohort.”
