First day of special voting proceeds smoothly in Nelson Mandela Bay

The first day of special voting in Nelson Mandela Bay went smoothly, with officials from the Independent Electoral Commission reaching the majority of registered voters on Monday.

The IEC said the Eastern Cape had the highest number of home-visit special vote applications for the national and provincial elections.

At the Buffelsfontein Old Age Home, presiding officer Zolile Dayimani said the voting had gone off without a hitch in the main, with teams going out to do the home visits.

“We’ve just come back from the home visits and everything went well,” Dayimani said.

Walmer Lower Primary School presiding officer Ntombesizwe Skweyiya said things had gone smoothly at the voting station and the team would be undertaking door-todoor visits on Tuesday.

“We did 18 home visits and 26 votes at the station,” Skweyiya said.

“It is quiet but we expect things to pick up.” New Life Christian Church (Walmer Township) presiding officer Pamela Mkalipi said everything had gone according to plan, except for a resident who had asked them to remove IEC branding from his boundary wall.

“He said he did not want the IEC banners on his fence and asked us to remove them, which we did.

“We did 16 home visits out of the 32 who had registered,” Mkalipi said.

Elderly Walmer resident Leonie Cameron, who cast her special vote at the City Hall, said she still believed that her vote would bring the positive change that she would like to see in the metro.

“I am happy that I form part of this day to exercise my right to vote.

“The process went smoothly and peacefully,” she said.

Eastern Cape provincial electoral officer Kayakazi Magudumana said the province made up 20% of the national figure for home visits.

“Nationally, 452,418 applications for home visits were received, of which 85,282 were in the Eastern Cape.

“Within the province, the areas with the highest number of home-visit applications are Buffalo City metro with 9,665, followed by Nelson Mandela Bay metro with 6,763 applications,” Magudumana said.

Bay mayor Mongameli Bobani confirmed that special voting was under way in various venues around the city and that no incidents had been reported so far.

“We are not expecting any challenges until the second day of special votes [on Tuesday] but, in the event of any unexpected incident, we will be ready to respond.”

IEC regional supervisor Crosby Bacela said more than 21,000 voters had applied for special votes on May 6 and 7.

“We urge all 612,000 registered voters in our city to visit the 255 voting stations [on Wednesday],” Bacela said.

Magudumana said that while day one of the special votes had generally gone well in the Eastern Cape, there had been a few challenges in some parts of the province, including community protests and IEC officials being threatened.

“We also had heavy rains in places such as Alfred Nzo, where a river overflowed causing voting to stop.”