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S. African president announces date for local elections

Xinhua, April 6, 2016 Adjust font size:

South African President Jacob Zuma announced on Wednesday that the next local government elections will be held on August 3 this year.

The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs David van Rooyen will follow the necessary legal procedure to proclaim the date and undertake any other requirements, Zuma said.

"We urge all those who are eligible to vote register to vote and those who have not checked their names to do so on Saturday and Sunday this weekend so that together we continue to re-affirm and deepen our democracy," said the president.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) said it is hoping that as many new voters as possible will join the existing 25.6 million registered voters to boost the voters' roll above its current level of about 75 percent of the eligible voting population.

To significantly increase the current voters' roll will require a large number of young first-time voters to register this weekend, the IEC said.

Statistics show that nearly 80 percent of the eight million eligible voters who are not currently registered are younger than 30.

Over three million South African voters visited their voting stations during the March registration weekend to register for the first time, to re-register and to update their registration and address details. This included almost 700 000 new voters. It is hoped at least a similar number will register this weekend.

The elections come as the government under Zuma "is moving from one crisis to the next," Tawana Kupe, dean of the Humanities Departmernt at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, told Xinhua.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) is facing the most fierce competition from the opposition parties since the end of apartheid in 1994, said Kupe.

The local government elections will see political parties fighting for control of the country's metropolitans. Opposition political parties, particularly, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), have vowed to take over Johannesburg, Pretoria and Nelson Mandela Bay municipality from the ANC.

Both the ANC and DA have launched campaigns to urge voters to vote, with both saying that their leaders would be conducting door-to-door visits to seek support.

Municipal elections are held every five years.

Voters will elect the members of the district, metropolitan and local municipal councils, who, in turn, will elect the mayors of the municipalities to office. Enditem