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Ballot box.
The Electoral Commission (IEC) Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Masego Shiburi says they are pushing hard to ensure that the youth show up at polling stations on November 4.
Shiburi was speaking ahead of the commission’s launch of its 2026 Local Government Elections (LGE) campaign in Midrand, Johannesburg, on Wednesday morning.
He says communications and outreach programmes are largely designed to appeal to the younger people.
Shiburi says, “It is purposefully youthful to drive the registration of those young persons, and we know that once they are registered, they are more likely to participate than any age cohort.”
“We are heartened that the voter roll is bigger than the voter roll that we went into the elections in 2024, and that is largely attributable to the work that the commission and political parties do at schools on campuses and using our online platform to push up the registration of younger persons.”
He adds, “We can still do more, we call on younger persons to take the opportunity for the convenience of the online platform, those who can come to voting stations on the weekend of the 20th and 21st of June, we ask them to do so that we can grow the voter’s roll.”
VIDEO | Full interview with Shiburi:
‘MISINFORMATION’
The IEC has outlined what is required for it to retain the trust of South Africans.
The Commission’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Sy Mamabolo, says it is essential for the body to be seen to be credible.
Mamabolo says, “We need to meet the constitutional standards, the expectations of the constitution as we navigate the implementation of the mandate, but we also have to deal with disinformation because public trust is abating because of misinformation in the electoral landscape.”
He says, “So if you don’t deal with disinformation and misinformation, it eats away at the level of trust that people have in the institutions, and we have to implement the electoral law without favour and prejudice.”
