This is good news. But let me just understand this…so, essentially, if any South African offshore has voted in the past, they will still be on the voters role, and as such will still eligible to vote – all they need to do is inform the Electoral Commission in the next 15 or so day.

Consequently this ruling will mainly penalise young people who have left the country for whatever reason, and who have never actually participated in an election before, and will therefore not have been registered voters.

My question comment/remains though: Essentially the Constitutional Court is saying that even though voters never had the ability to vote if offshore up until now, they were not prepared to allow the registration of South Africans abroad who had not registered because an arbitrary registration period for registering has come and gone i.e. this 15 day period (I think that is the right number of days) is more important than the right of young people to have exepected their govenment and/or the IEC to have provided them with the right to do so before?

How can people be expected to regsiter when the machinery was not in place (short of flying home?), and surely this breaks a very basic tenant of Constituional Law, which is namely to allow as best as possible pople to exercise their right to vote?

Surely this case argues for the fact that we should be very disappointed with the IEC who should have been making the correct (and non-party politcal noises) regarding South African’s abroad right to vote, and attempting to guide government accordingly w.r.t. citizens rights. Why did they not create more of a fuss about the unconstituionality of this matter at the time?

Essentially, this judgement is very biased against young South Africans who haven’t voted before, and may not have been aware of their Constitutional rights!

Surely, the IEC had a responsibilty to these people and has failed them…? Surely it is not only the political parties who have failed these people by applying late, but also the IEC who acts a semi-custodian of these peoples rights when it comes to elections?

Of course the IEC will argue that they were only implementing the law, but I feel their job held a far greater burden than merely implementing the law (which was clearly unconstituional afromt he get-go and has been ruled as such?)

Finally, it appears as though the Freedom Front were hoodwinked by President Mothlanthe when he said he would not promulgate the election date, and if I remember correctly, they then (on his word) chose not to seek an injunction against him from doing so…or am I missing something here?

I look forward to the views on the matters I have raised above, and any incorrect facts/opinions pointed out.

1) You have to be a registered voter

To apply for a special vote in the upcoming 2009 National and Provincial Elections, you have to be a registered voter.
If you have registered before (either in 1999, 2006 or on the registration weekends in November 2008 or February 2009) you are a registered voter.

2) If you are abroad

You will be able to vote at the South African foreign mission closest to you. You can find out which foreign mission is closest to you by clicking on the link on the homepage of the C2C blog.
Voting at foreign mission will take place on 15 April.

here you go court has extended the application for special votes to March 27. have a nice day

Firstly congratulations for your country, i think that is a healthy sign for your growing democracy.

If I can answer your concerns about the judgement…my opinion is because the application was brought to the courts too late in the game and registration to vote has already been closed, my line of thinking looking at the bigger picture, if the the expats have not registered to vote for 2009 and can register now to vote this could case considerable delays to the election day and the outcome of the election would be delayed and I would imagin some political parties would start crying foul vote rigging and so forth.

However all is not lost as im sure there are a number of expats who have just gone overseas are registered to vote for 2009 but this is not the end in your next general elections you can be rest assured a huge volume of expats will register to vote. Its a sweet victory well done to you guys

PdV – can you please tell me if this is consistent logic – how could one register to vote when offshore when you knew that you would not be allowed to vote if you were still offshore? How would an application have been received if it stated that you were offshore on a longer than temporary basis?

What are the backward looking implications of the practicalities of such a ruling?

Is it logical?

I would like to know more.

Patriotism is supporting you country all the time, and your government when it deserves it…!

Never try to educate someone who resists knowledge at all costs.

Never argue with a fool – he will bring you down to his level and beat you with experience.

It’s no point in getting upset with the undemocratic tendencies of people like this – they argue for undemocratic practices under the veil of a warped interpretation the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

They refuse to believe that a real democracy involves all of it’s citizen all of the time, not some of it’s citizens all of the time…!

Spuy, having read through your posts, you clearly have a very ANC-sided view of the world. You clearly know more about Saffas living abroad than I do, so if you could perhaps tell me where to find these people who are plotting to overthrow the “black man government” I would appreciate it – since, clearly, the reason I’m overseas is to do the same. I’m going to need backup, and I just haven’t found anybody like that yet. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Spuy, if you read my earlier post, you will also see that you are contradicting your current president, who seems to think it is desirable for South Africans to live and work overseas for periods of time, in order to skill themselves and gain international experience. Spuy, if you can find me a couple of South African hedge funds with net assets of around USD1bn, I’ll come back and work there…until then, I’ll keep on expanding my knowledge and skill set here, so that when I get back to SA I will be an even more valuable commodity than when I left. While you may see this as unpatriotic, treasonous, supremacist and racist, I simply call it a win-win for my future employer, my country, and myself.

Perhaps you could tell us what the ANC has done for YOU…not “the electorate”, but YOU yourself? We who live overseas do not rely purely on the media, believe it or not – we also have telephones over here, and the internet, and sometimes we call our families back in SA who we miss very much, and ask them how things are. When 75 year old Tannie Elsie down the road was raped and shot while she lay in bed, and it doesn’t even make the liberal neo-colonial racist western newspapers because it’s so commonplace these days, we get upset with our government. It’s not because they’re black, Spuy, it’s because a short while ago they told us to shut up about crime or leave the country. Tannie Elsie will have to shut up about crime now, because she’s dead – is that what the ANC government meant?

I don’t get angry with people like you anymore, because that’s the reaction you want – you like to provoke people like me, who are patriotic, but happen to be non-black and/or non-ANC fans into saying things that you can throw into our faces again. I do still get very very sad, that people with so few brain cells exist 14 years into democracy. But then again, it’s not your fault – the ANC managed to wreck our education system too.

One last thought, if you’ve managed to read this far – a patriot is somebody who loves their country. Somebody who loves the ANC and thinks that all whites are racists when they complain about the ANC is not a patriot, that is an ANC loyalist. Learn to love SA with everybody in it and all the differing views, and then you will be authoritative enough to tell other people if they are or are not patriotic.

I know the masses pay some measly little portion of tax (VAT, PAYE etc., but we all do that AND some more). The majority of South African tax income comes from a very small percentage of the population; and a very small portion of the total tax income, comes from the masses. In other words the people who contribute the least to the income of the country has the most say, and those who contribute the most has the least say. Many of the working class laborers are below the tax-paying bracket, yet they have the same say (vote). This One-Man-One-Vote system is not fair, it should be Every-Tax-Payer-Vote-Proportional-To-Tax-Rate, no matter class or race. Such a system should be easy to implement and it is reasonable and fair.

Obviously you just want to argue most of the time.

Why did you not respond about those in jail who do not pay tax (but leech off the tax payers) having the right to vote, yet true South Africans patriots like Slipper and George may not vote even though they pay tax. When these guys come back they will return with bags full of money, valuable experience, be an asset to South Africa, yet they may not vote to have a say for the future leadership of this country. Dis kak en jy weet dit. You guys pretend to not be threatened by their vote, implying that it wouldn’t make a dent in the outcome of the elections. Then why the hell argue against them voting. If you are so confident, be all for it, that ALL South Africans have a vote proportional to the tax they are paying.

Please accept my apologies then.

But the ‘hidden truth” as Pilger put it is almost ubiquitous in most mainstream media reporting on ideological differences in the ANC .

Take for example the latest from the M&G.

“and to ensure that the electoral slate has appeal to new voters and an urban middle class who are fed up with the ANC and broadly receptive to a message of modernisation and economic openness. ”

You see the only “modern” economical model is the neoliberal one that the author so conveniently forget to attribute to the ANC – seeing that it was the “business-friendly” ANC under Mbeki who gave as all this “economical growth” that for the impoverished majority is so hard to detect.

“If Pityana and company are to have a real impact, though, they need to be able to ignore the Mbeki-ite heavies and concentrate on the second- and third-tier leadership of Cope; young, educated, highly capable people who identified with the Mbeki project in the ANC primarily because they believed it was time to move beyond the ossified language of the Moscow party school,”

So who is the “Moscow party school” – ah, let me guess COSATU and SACP those evil “left-leaning” allies of Zuma ?

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-03-07-saving-cope-the-breech-baby