Cape Town - Voter registration for the 2011 municipal elections got off to a slow start in the Western Cape earlier this morning.
Independent Electoral Commission staff at various voting stations were expecting numbers to pick up as the day went by.
Most of the stations visited by BuaNews in Wynberg, Constantia and Plumstead were empty, with only a few elderly people trickling in to check that their names appear on the voters roll.
By 10am at Oliver Tambo Hall in Khayelitsha, officials there said that about ten people had come to register.
"Its very, very slow, but we hope it will get better. The youth don't seem to care these days. Only the elderly are coming through" said an official who did not want to be named.
At the voting station set up at Gugulethu Comprehensive High School, an IEC official said that "people were disillusioned and were not turning up."
"I don't think that the registration process was marketed very well, people seem not to be aware of this. Better publicity would have resulted in more people coming through," he said.
At Gugulethu Civic Hall, officials there were more optimistic that the turn out would improve as the day went by. "It's the weekend; most young people are still tired after partying last night. They are going to come later," said of the officials.
Ntombekhaya Viso, a mother of four, said that she had registered to vote because she was tired of living in a shack. "I have lived in a shack for 40 years. I want a house. I want to vote for service delivery," she said.
The Wynberg Regional Home Affairs office said that it would be open until 5pm between today and tomorrow to allow people to collect their IDs in order to register.
The provincial IEC office said that they would release trends in todays' registration process later in the day.
