A former KZN councillor who succeeded in getting a by-election postponed again, says he is fighting a “David and Goliath” battle.
|||Durban - A former KwaZulu-Natal councillor who succeeded on Tuesday in getting a by-election postponed for the second time, says he is fighting a “David and Goliath” battle to prevent the “Zimbabwe syndrome” from taking hold in South Africa.
“As we have just seen in Zimbabwe again, a monopolistic party that controls the voters rolls and the electoral commission of a country is virtually impossible to remove from office, even after well over 30 years’ of inept, destructive rule,” said André Lötter of Vryheid.
A professional translator, Lötter has been waging court battles since April to fight voters roll fraud, and to compel the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to investigate it.
He scored a second court victory yesterday when the by-election in Ward 22 in Abaqulusi was put off again.
The poll has been marked by a long-running saga of voters roll fraud, including a court ordering the IEC to investigate it, and a war of words between the parties.
The Constitutional Court issued an interim order on Tuesday, meaning a second postponement.
The previous scheduled by-election was halted on April 23, also on its eve, by the Electoral Court.
In April, Lötter told the Electoral Court that bogus voters had been bused in by the ANC and the IFP during the registration process.
He said he had been prevented from registering as a candidate.
The by-election was triggered when Lötter, at the time an ANC member, resigned as councillor. He hoped to stand as an independent candidate in the by-election.
The IEC had initially refused to investigate the burgeoning voters roll, which had grown by about 3 000 voters in two years, on the grounds that a housing development had brought more voters into the area.
But following the enforced investigation, the IEC said last week that it had found that more than 1 500 voters had been bused in from other wards and fraudulently registered.
Lötter believes the true figure is closer to 2 800.
He was unhappy that the Electoral Court had not ruled in favour of his other requests.
He wanted the ANC and IFP to be barred from contesting the by-election, and for the guilty parties to be prosecuted.
The Electoral Court refused him the right to appeal on these two points, and referred him to the Constitutional Court.
“The law does not allow the Electoral Court to review its own orders,” he was told.
Lötter lodged his case with the Constitutional Court last month.
On Tuesday, the Constitutional Court issued orders.
“The ConCourt said the parties (the IEC, ANC and IFP) must say why the case should not be referred back to the Electoral Court - it has not ruled it must be referred back to the Electoral Court,” Lötter said.
“But clearly the ConCourt thinks the case should go back to the Electoral Court. Yet, for the moment, it is still in the ConCourt.”
Lötter believes that senior officials in the ANC and IFP were involved in the fraud.
The IFP’s deputy national spokesman, Joshua Mazibuko, strongly denied this: “You will not find any evidence that our structures have encouraged this. Nowhere in our history (either),” he said.
“If Lötter has evidence that we were involved, and if he gives us the names of the people involved in busing in bogus voters to register on the voters roll, we will ourselves take action against them. They must go to court, and the court must make a finding, then we will take action.”
The ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal spokesman, Senzo Mkhize, said yesterday: “The IEC thoroughly conducted the investigation and removed names of people who illegally registered to vote in the ward. The ANC believes the IEC has done a sterling job in terms of ensuring the voters roll is clean.”
Mkhize said Lötter’s efforts to prevent the poll were undermining the will of the people.
Lötter was using “every trick in the book” to prevent it.
In court papers and statements to the press, Lötter has charged that the commission is too close to the ANC.
Daily News