72 PER CENT OF ELECTORATE READY TO VOTE: SLABBERT JOHANNESBURG Sept 4 Sapa About 72 per cent of the electorate would go to the polls in November, Electoral Task Group co-chairman Dr Fredrick van Zyl Slabbert said on Monday. Speaking at a conflict resolution conference in Johannesburg, arranged by the Election Information Research Consortium, he said the 72 per cent was made up of 41 per cent urban voters and 31 per cent rural voters. The bulk of those not voting lived in Kwazulu-Natal, Slabbert said. There was no guarantee elections would take place in Kwazulu-Natal by June next year. Any decision regarding the status of tribal land in the rural areas had to be referred to Houses of Traditional Leaders for comment, and there was no legislative procedure to speed up the process, he said. Voters' rolls had posed problems but these were confined to a few areas, Slabbert said. Other issues raising concern were how to deal with people who had no fixed address and the circumstances in which civil servants would be allowed to stand for office. Financial considerations were becoming amajor issue as the elections approached, compounded by emerging local government bodies havingno idea of their costs, Slabbert said. After the elections, he said, issues that would come into focus would include new councillors with no experience taking office, and te stagnant revenue base of many municipalities. Slabbert said the tas group had recommended no voter regisptember 25, even though elections in certain provinces would take place later than November 1. This meant people who turned 18 before the elections were held in their areas would have to register before September 25. Western Cape voters' roll official Ashek Manne said elections would take place on time for 95 transitional local councils. Elections in the Cape Town metropole and rural areas were scheduled for March. Manne said illiteracy, coupled with the fact that 60,000 people in the Western Cape did not have fixed addresses, was causing major problems in voter registration.