The Deputy Chief Electoral Commissioner, Masego Sheburi has denied that the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) was hiring only members of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) to work during the voter registration weekend and elections.
This was after the EFF accused the IEC of only hiring Sadtu members.
The EFF repeated its claim on Tuesday against Sadtu and the IEC, and called on its members to guard against members of the union during the registration weekend.
It said Sadtu was an alliance partner of the ANC. The union supports the ANC, said the EFF.
But Sheburi told members of the portfolio committee on home affairs on Tuesday, they did not hire Sadtu members only, but people from across sectors of society.
He said the IEC does submit names of people working for it at voting stations to the local and national party liaison committees. If there were objections, the IEC addresses concerns raised by any party.
All parties represented in Parliament are members of the national liaison committee.
Sheburi said the IEC uses a certain criteria to recruit people to work for them. This is developed with the national party liaison committee.
“In other words, all parties represented in Parliament have representation on that committee and for that reason they can make an input into the criteria.
“Nothing in the criteria or in the policy of the IEC says the commission will recruit teachers to the exclusion of everyone else. Nothing in the criteria says the commission will recruit teachers affiliated to a specific union. In fact, once we have recruited those staff members, we share the names with the local party liaison committee so that parties can give the names to their structures and for their structures to raise objections against the suitability or otherwise of those people we intend to use at the voting station,” said Sheburi.
“Lastly, the commission is of the view that it will be unlawful and unconstitutional to exclude a class of people from opportunities of working at voting stations purely because they are teachers or because they belong to a union. An objection against the suitability of a person must be against a specific person in terms of the criteria in all instances where the commission has considered objections and has sustained them,” said Sheburi.
He said once the IEC has finalised recruitment it also checks if the new recruits have never been candidates of political parties before.
They also check if the recruits have criminal records “so that we don’t end up with undesirable persons” at the voting stations.
Sheburi said it was all systems go for the registration weekend on Saturday and Sunday.
The IEC has more than 23,000 voting stations across the country, and more than 74,000 staff members will be involved during the weekend voter registration process.
Sheburi said they had a dry-run at the end of October to test their systems ahead of November 18 and 19 registration weekend.
Politics