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S. Africa’s Potential Voters Register Their Impatience

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The shiny Mercedes-Benz sedan wove through a maze of wobbly tin shacks and open sewers Friday on the opening day of voter registration for South Africa’s second democratic election.

“Madiba! Madiba!” the crowds chanted as President Nelson Mandela, greeted by his clan name, stepped into the morning sunshine to urge residents of Johannesburg’s most destitute suburb to sign up to vote.

There was one problem: The would-be voters had to be turned away. The registration station was still closed three hours after the scheduled opening because staff and materials had not arrived.

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There were glitches across South Africa as the country for the first time began the task of registering 25 million eligible voters for parliamentary elections expected in May. It will be the first national poll since Mandela’s African National Congress swept to power in the momentous vote of 1994 that ended white-minority rule. It will also mark Mandela’s official retirement from public life.

In most countries, registering voters is an uneventful necessity, but the exercise here is drawing inordinate scrutiny because it is viewed as a test of the ANC-led government’s readiness to conduct next year’s vote.

It has also become a stark illustration of how much has changed in the past five years: This time, virtually every move by election officials is being questioned, criticized and challenged. Even the decision to hold the three-day registration over this weekend was condemned because violent crime is reportedly worse on Saturdays and Sundays.

“The honeymoon is over,” said Johann Kriegler, a retired judge who heads the country’s Independent Electoral Commission, a post he also held five years ago. “In 1994, the elections were magic, bells were ringing, and we were the flavor of the year.”

During the last election, when black South Africans were able to vote for the first time, there was no time to put together registration rolls; anyone who showed up with proper identification was given a ballot. So many people voted on the first day that authorities ran out of ballots and voting had to be extended an extra day.

There were countless irregularities in 1994, but they were largely overlooked because the outcome was never in doubt and nearly everyone wanted to give the new South Africa a chance. This time, court challenges were being prepared before the first voter registration station even opened its doors Friday.

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“This time around, we mean business, and the electorate will expect business from the government of the day,” said Juli Kilian of the National Party, which ruled South Africa under apartheid and is now the main opposition party in Parliament. “We will not take any nonsense.”

Both the National Party and the Democratic Party, groups with large white memberships, announced this week that they will go to court to block the registration process. The parties claim that a government requirement that only citizens holding bar-coded identity documents can register is unconstitutional.

According to opinion surveys, as many as 5 million South Africans do not have bar-coded identity documents. Supporters of the two unhappy political parties, the surveys show, are among the voters most likely to possess identity papers issued before the bar code was introduced in 1986. Most members of the predominantly black ANC have the new documents because they were eager to trade in IDs issued by the apartheid government.

ANC officials say the bar-coded documents are essential to ensure a smooth vote and reduce fraud. The Home Affairs Ministry, which issues IDs, has extended its hours to accommodate a rush of late applicants and promises that no one will be denied new documents.

Critics, however, say that is not good enough, particularly in light of the large number of bureaucratic snafus that have already plagued the registration process. Even Mandela was given the wrong address to register Friday morning in his posh Johannesburg suburb. When the president showed up at the Houghton Primary School, election boss Kriegler broke the news to him that he would have to try again elsewhere.

“He can’t register here, but he can go through the motions for public relations purposes,” Kriegler said in an interview as Mandela posed for cameras inside the school auditorium. “It is an event you cannot stop.”

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Opposition parties say they have no faith that Home Affairs officials can process the expected deluge of last-minute ID applications, and some of them suggest that the bar-code requirement is intended to reduce voter turnout.

“There is no shame in admitting an inability to provide an efficient registration service rather than submitting millions of voters to a flawed process,” said Douglas Gibson of the Democratic Party.

Despite plans for a nationwide launch, registration was able to begin Friday in only half the country, with a second round now scheduled for next weekend. The electoral commission did not have enough money to hire staff, and the government, which ultimately agreed to intervene, was unable to draft enough civil servants for last-minute volunteer duty.

In the end, thousands of soldiers from the National Defense Force were deployed after being promised a few days off as incentive. The prospect of military personnel working the voter rolls, however, has horrified some civil libertarians and has also come as a surprise to the soldiers themselves.

“It is kind of different walking around and seeing things we don’t normally get to see,” said Lance Cpl. Neville Crerar, a white soldier distributing registration leaflets on his first visit to this black township. “We come here once in a blue moon . . . in armored vehicles.”

The streets of Alexandra stink of sewage, and many flimsy roofs are held in place only by the weight of stones and tires. Crime rates here are among the worst in the country, and the sense of desperation is palpable. Even with the registration blitz, some residents said Friday that they have no intention of casting a ballot next year.

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“It doesn’t make a difference for me,” one man, who would not identify himself, said as he watched three white soldiers walk by. “I did vote [last time], and I didn’t see any difference.”

Linda Mafu, a project officer at the Open Society Foundation in Cape Town, said voters across the country are feeling a huge letdown from 1994. The foundation is funding a $1-million voter education drive, which Mafu said is needed even more now than five years ago.

“A lot of people already think elections don’t matter,” Mafu said. “They say, ‘I see this and that has changed, but it hasn’t changed my life.’ Some of them, especially in rural areas, feel the government has not really delivered what they were expecting.”

Paul Graham of the Pretoria-based Institute for Democracy in South Africa said international interest in the election is also sharply reduced from 1994. There is a huge drop in financial support for such things as voter education, and there is even talk that there may be no international election monitors. Graham said the changes reflect confidence in South Africa, not a sudden abandonment.

“There was a sense in 1994 that you could have a power vacuum and parties might resist the results, but this time it is not even an issue,” Graham said. “We seem to have entered the real modern democratic world, and quite rapidly.”

Waiting here outside a crowded registration center in a one-room church called Poverty, Norman Ngweya, an unemployed driver, said things have been changing so fast in South Africa that residents expect too much of the new government.

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From a wooden pew, he lectured on the need for patience.

“I am here for my children and grandchildren,” he said.

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