Political parties demand investigation into registrations
Political parties are demanding an investigation into special votes registrations irregularities.
Three political parties within the Amajuba District have called for an investigation by the electoral court into the 2026 local government elections special votes registrations.
During a media briefing on Thursday (October 29), NDRF leader Matthew Shunmugam claimed that the municipality had ‘harvested’ the personal information of residents during mayoral programmes and events, and used it to register these residents for special votes.
He claimed that an analysis of a copy of the special voters’ register revealed a significant disparity between Newcastle West and East, saying he was especially concerned about the large number of ‘walk-ins’ (people registered for special voting who do not require a home visit).
The entire West recorded just over 600, which, according to Shunmugam, is normal.
Shunmugam claimed that special votes are exactly that, special votes, and are reserved for those physically unable to attend on November 4, such as the elderly, the disabled or front-line workers such as police, doctors and nurses.
“The home visits should far exceed the number of walk-ins, not the other way round,” he said.
However, in one ward alone, there are over 1500 special vote registrations, which Shunmugam said is impossible.
He believes people’s personal information was obtained from registers they had to fill in during municipal programmes.
This information was then allegedly used to register these residents for special votes without their knowledge or consent.
Shunmugam further claimed that they had obtained affidavits from residents claiming they did not register for special votes but received SMSs from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) informing them that they were registered as such.
“According to these residents, the only places where they had recently provided their personal information were municipal-led programmes where they were asked to fill in registers,” he said.
Shunmugam further stated that looking at the voter registrations, it was obvious that the high recordings were in the same areas where mayoral events were hosted, adding to the speculation.
Should these claims prove to be true, this could raise serious concerns over how these registrations were submitted and how it was not picked up by the IEC as suspicious.
Case opened with police and Electoral Court:
Shunmugam said the NDRF, together with two other parties, had reported the matter to the IEC and had also registered a case with the Electoral Court in Bloemfontein.
“We have handed every shred of proof we have over to them and now it’s up to them to investigate the matter further,” he said.
He continued that, “We’ll also be contesting the results heavily tipped by the special votes and we’ve asked that the November 4 votes and the special votes be counted separately, to prove how the special votes affect the final voter count and to prove how the system was defrauded.”
Shunmugam said elections are supposed to be free and fair, and it’s the IEC’s duty to ensure it stays that way.
“We’re raising the alarm now already so that no one can come afterwards and say it’s just a case of sour grapes. We have informed the IEC of this possible corruption ahead of time so that they know what to look out for after November 4,” he said.
Both the IEC and Newcastle Municipality were informed of the accusations on Thursday afternoon and were asked to respond to these allegations.
Thabani Ngwira from the Electoral Commission of South Africa acknowledged the media enquiry and said he would engage with his colleagues in the district before issuing a response.
The municipality, however, had not acknowledged or responded to the Advertiser’s media enquiry by the time of publishing this article.
Refer to the Northern Natal News Section of this week’s Newcastle Advertiser for the full report.
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