MOST REGISTERED VOTERS EXPECTED TO VOTE IN LOCAL POLLS

JOHANNESBURG Aug 23 Sapa

More than 70 per cent of the 17.3 million registered voters
were expected to vote in November's local elections, a report by
the Elections Task Group said on Wednesday.

Although elections would not take place in KwaZulu-Natal and
rural areas of the Western Cape by November 1, task group
co-chairman Dr Frederick van Zyl Slabbert said the election process
in the rest of the country was on schedule.

"The voting process started out as an hour-glass figure," he
told a media briefing in Johannesburg. "We started out depending on
getting voters to register. Then we moved into a narrow area of
setting inner and outer boundaries. Now we're moving into broader
areas again, like determining transitional council areas and the
number of seats."

The biggest snag in the election process was in KwaZulu-Natal,
which was required to hold elections before March 31 next year.

Slabbert said the whole province was a problem.

"We've pretty much accepted that there will be no elections (in
KwaZulu-Natal) on November 1."

The major problem was whether certain tracts of tribal land
should be incorporated with urban areas run by transitional local
councils.

If the African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party
could not come to an agreement, the issue would have to be taken to
the House of Traditional Leaders, Slabbert said. The dispute might
then be taken to the Constitutional Court.

Slabbert said the task group felt the problem could be solved
only by political negotiation.

The November 1 elections were unlikely to take place in rural
areas of the Western Cape because of requests to amend the
constitution to allow district councils to be elected.

Problems were also being experienced in the Eastern Cape, where
traditional leaders had vowed not to participate in the elections.
This could stall the election process in that province.

In the Eastern Transvaal, agreement had still not been reached
between the provincial government and Northern Province regarding
the management of the election process in two areas. A court
hearing would be a last resort to settle the dispute, and
negotiations were continuing.

The boundaries of transitional local councils in Northern
Province were still being debated, and this also presented a
problem.

Slabbert said Western Cape authorities had succeeded in solving
the problem of delinking transitional local councils. Elections
would take place on schedule in 95 of the 96 TLCs.

- SABC radio on Wednesday reported the task team had
recommended to the cabinet that it extend the voter registration
date.

Slabbert and his co-chairman Kehla Shubane had asked for a
supplementary registration period from September 15 to 25, the
radio said.

This would allow 22 of the 680 local authorities with low voter
registrations to increase their figures.