Zuko Komisa

Over half a million ID documents haven’t been collected.
According to Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, their offices have approximately 500,000 unclaimed IDs.
The Home Affairs Committee of Parliament was briefed by Motsoaledi and the Electoral Commission on the commission’s preparedness for this weekend’s voter registration drive in advance of the general elections in 2024.
Voter registration weekend is on November 18 and 19.
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Motsoaledi clarified that the number does not imply that 500,000 individuals won’t be able to register or cast a ballot in the next elections.
“Honourable members when we announced that there are 500 000 IDs uncollected, in the mind of the public and the members is that if those IDs are not collected, 500 000 people will never register and will never vote. But the Deputy Minister has just explained that actually, that will affect 125 000 out of which 10 000 were collected.”
“The others as he said apart from people who passed on who are 64 000, are people who are coming for the second time and most of them do have IDs but they are coming to apply for a smart ID card. You are aware that in Home Affairs we still have the old barcoded ID and the smart ID.”
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Despite encountering a few difficulties during its “dry run,” the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) believes it’s more than prepared for this weekend’s voter registration.
Masego Sheburi, the deputy CEO of the commission, told the parliament that staff members had undergone evaluations and that tests had been conducted on all systems.
“The first one was in the morning when we opened registration stations – the databases could not handle the load that it was subjected to.”
“We have upgraded all our voter management devices to Android 11, which is the recent operating system. With that, we are also able to enhance our applications we’ve developed in-house.” says Sheburi,
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