IEC tells Carletonville candidate to report voter roll transfer to police
A ward candidate says his registration was moved to Mpumalanga without his knowledge, which would bar him from contesting and from voting at home.
eNCA reports that a Carletonville activist who planned to stand in the November 4 municipal elections has found his voter registration moved to Mpumalanga, a province he says he has never visited.
Sello Molisalife, 45, intended to contest Ward 12 in the Merafong City Local Municipality for a grouping called the Merafong Agents of Change. When candidate lists were being finalised last month, he was told his registration now sat in Mpumalanga.
Under the electoral law a person may only be registered in the voting district where they ordinarily live. A registration in another province therefore does two things at once. It removes the ballot he would have cast in Ward 12, and it disqualifies him from standing there, because a candidate must be registered to vote in the ward or municipality they contest.
Molisalife does not know how the change happened. He said he could not tell whether it was a mistake by the Electoral Commission or something done deliberately, and that he hoped whoever was responsible would face justice. He has also said plainly that he will not vote in Mpumalanga, because being registered where he lives is what matters to him.
He accepts that he could have checked his own registration status earlier and caught the change before the lists closed.
The commission’s answer
The Electoral Commission says its timetable is fixed and that it will not be reopened. Its spokesperson, James Aphane, said the commission is running a very large operation and cannot take changes at the last minute, and that candidates who missed the timetable deadlines have lost their chance.
The commission has urged Molisalife to take his complaint to the South African Police Service, which is the body that would investigate an allegation of fraud. Molisalife says he intends to open a fraud case.
That is the correct channel, and it is worth stating what it means. The commission runs the register and the election, but it does not investigate crime. If a registration was altered without the voter’s knowledge, the conduct is unlawful, and the police and the National Prosecuting Authority are the institutions that can act on it. No political party, campaign or individual has any standing to move a voter’s registration, and none may enforce electoral rules on its own account.
The commission’s position on the timetable is not unusual. South Africa has run national, provincial and municipal elections on schedule since 1994, and the November 4 poll is the sixth municipal election under the current framework. The candidate list process has its own statutory cut-off dates, and the commission has defended them in court before.
What a voter can do before November 4
Every registered voter can check their own details free of charge by sending their identity number to the commission’s short code, by using the online portal, or by visiting their local municipal electoral office. Voters can also confirm the voting station they are assigned to. The check takes a few minutes.
Where a voter finds that their details are wrong, the commission’s own procedures allow for a correction, and the voter does not need a lawyer to ask for one. The earlier that is done, the more room there is to fix it.
The scale of the operation is the reason the deadlines are tight. More than 500 parties and about 143 000 candidates are contesting the 2026 municipal elections, according to figures the commission has released, and every registration, nomination and ballot paper has to be settled before voting day.
Molisalife will not be on the ballot in Ward 12 and will not cast a vote there on November 4. He says he will stay involved in his community and find other ways to work.
The commission has referred the matter to the police process, and any fraud case he opens in Carletonville will be the next dated step in the matter.
