Pretoria - The Gauteng Independent Electoral Commission is hoping to register at least 200 000 new voters during the upcoming voter registration for the 2011 municipal elections this weekend.
"Currently, we have 5.4 million eligible voters in our provincial voters' roll and during this voter registration weekend, we are hoping to get 200 000 new voters and the majority of them should be young people," the provincial IEC chairperson, Sy Mamabolo, told BuaNews at the unveiling of a programme aimed at intensifying the IEC's voter registration drive in Mamelodi on Thursday.
"Our country's democratic future rests in the hands of young people, so we are hoping to get more young people participating in this voter registration because without young people in our democracy, we have no future," he said.
With the unveiled Democracy Education Facilitator programme, the Gauteng IEC seeks to mobilise citizens to value the importance of participating in local government elections.
In an exclusive interview with BuaNews, Mamabolo said the significance of the programme was to ensure that South Africans remain engaged in the national democratic process of electing the leadership of their choice.
The programme saw a total of 211 democracy educator facilitators embarking on a door-to-door campaign through Mamelodi's Maseko complex and Solomon Mahlangu Square and the communities of Eesterus and Nelmapius reminding people of the upcoming voter registration weekend.
The democracy education facilitators also distributed pamphlets with more information about the upcoming local government elections including voter registration. The pamphlets were in different indigenous languages spoken at the township and its surrounding areas.
During the door-to-door campaign, the education facilitators do not sway the public to vote for any one particular party but urge people to visit their nearest voting stations to either register or ensure they are registered and to check the correctness of their details on the voters' roll.
The democratic education facilitators were recruited and trained between December and January and they have been allocated to Kungwini, Emfuleni, Midvaal, Lesedi, Mogale, Merafong, Westonaria, Randfontein, Tswhane, Ekurhuleni and Joburg municipalities.
The facilitators, who are mainly young people, started working on 17 January and have been conducting workshops at schools and various congregations.
The last phase of the programme will include balloting education, which essentially gives residents an insight into how voting stations function.
The province increased its voting registration stations from 2 295 to 2 483 in order to further extend convenience to the voting public.
The door-to-door campaign, led by Mamabolo, was in preparation of voter registration weekend on 5 and 6 February. All voting stations will open at 8am until 5pm.
For more info, go to http://www.buanews.gov.za/elections_index.html.
