By Thapelo Molefe
More than 28 million South Africans are now registered to vote ahead of the 4 November local government elections, with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) saying online registration has significantly expanded the voters’ roll and reshaped how citizens, particularly young people, register to vote.
The milestone follows the conclusion of the final voter registration weekend, during which all 23,699 voting stations nationwide remained open to allow eligible South Africans to register or update their details before registration closed.
The IEC is expected to announce the final registration figures during a media briefing on Monday.
IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo said the commission had already exceeded the 27.7 million voters registered for the 2024 general elections before the latest registration weekend began.
“At the time when we had the elections in 2024, there were 27.7 million people on the voters’ roll. Before this weekend we had already surpassed 28 million,” Mamabolo said.
He said the commission expected fewer in-person registrations than during the first registration weekend because most eligible voters had already registered online.
“We think we will not match the figures we realised in the first registration weekend, but there’s a context to that. The substantial majority of voters had already registered via our online portal,” he said.
Mamabolo said the commission’s online registration platform was changing the country’s electoral landscape, particularly among younger voters.
“The online registration portal is changing the registration landscape. We’re seeing fewer people going to stations and more people, in particular younger people, going online,” he said.
“Generally, young persons converse politically on mobile devices. They engage the state and its services on online platforms, so it makes sense that even for electoral processes they engage on the online registration portal.”
The IEC had urged South Africans to use the final registration weekend to ensure they were correctly registered and assigned to the appropriate voting district.
Although online registration remained available throughout the weekend, the commission experienced technical problems with its data-free registration service and said it worked with its partners to restore the platform.
By the close of registration activities on Saturday, the IEC had recorded more than 650,000 cumulative voter registration transactions.
Final figures for the two-day registration drive are expected to be released on Monday.
“We should be in a position by mid-day tomorrow to give the country a full account of the total registration activity over the two days,” Mamabolo said.
Speaking during the ANC’s voter registration campaign in Emalahleni, Mpumalanga, President Cyril Ramaphosa also welcomed what he described as strong participation by young people.
“The voter registration went very well, more than what I expected. We saw a number of young people coming out in droves to register,” Ramaphosa said.
He said the turnout challenged perceptions that young South Africans were disengaged from the democratic process.
“This myth that young people don’t want to register is not true. I found a lot of them being very excited to be first-time voters. The participation of young people just strengthens our democracy,” he said.
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