ELECTIONS-SLABBERT

PRETORIA August 1 Sapa

Only six provinces ready for local elections: Slabbert

Only six of South Africa's nine provinces were ready for the
November 1 local government elections, Local Government Elections
Task Group co-chairman Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert said on
Tuesday.

There was still an even chance that Gauteng could be prepared,
but it appeared impossible for the poll to go ahead on the
scheduled date in KwaZulu/Natal and the Western Cape, he told a
Pretoria Press Club luncheon.

Should the Johannesburg metropolitan area not be ready in time,
the overall percentage of voters taking part on November 1 would
drop from 70 to 60.

Slabbert said the task group had just completed a fresh survey
in all the provinces on their state of preparedness for the
elections.

"We are reasonably confident that six of the nine provinces can
hold elections on November 1."

The cabinet last week resolved that the local elections should
go ahead as planned in all nine provinces, but local areas not
ready for the poll could apply for exemption.

Exemptions would be granted on a local authority by authority
basis and not province by province, the cabinet said.

Slabbert said clarity on whether or not the elections in
Gauteng would go ahead as planned would be reached on Thursday when
the Special Electoral Court would try to resolve the demarcation
dispute in the Johannesburg metropolitan area.

"If it can solve the problem in one day, they can move to the
next stage of the division of wards and allocation of seats. They
say they are ready to do that."

Slabbert said the greater Johannesburg transitional
metropolitan council would have only about four days to divide
voters rolls into wards.

"I don't say it is impossible, but it is going to be
fascinating to see how it is done. If they succeed, we will have
elections in Gauteng."

Slabbert said the demarcation dispute in the Cape metropilitan
area was unlikely to be resolved in time.

The disagreement was to be taken to the Constitutional Court by
Western Cape MEC for local government Pieter Marais.

"The court is in recess and will only sit by the end of August,
which means that one can effectively write off elections in the
Western Cape," Slabbert said.

The only other way was an agreement, which would be an
"extraordinary coincidence", to separate the 95 transitional local
councils ready for the election from the Cape metropolitan area.

"The latest indications (on this) are not very favourable."

Slabbert said the main hitch in KwaZulu/Natal was a
disagreement on whether or not tribal land should form part of
urban areas.

"Can this problem be solved by means of the Local Government
Transition Act? It seems to me the short answer is `no'."

At least 46 of the 61 local areas in KwaZulu/Natal were ready
for elections on November 1, but they comprised only about 7 per
cent of the province.

Slabbert said his view was that "we should go as hard as we can
for as many elections as we can on November 1 and then deal with
the others on an individual basis".

"You cannot get the reconstruction and development programme
off the ground in the vast majority of cases until you have
completed the cycle of democratisation on the local level. It is
simply impossible."