THE elections are due next year and the druids of politics are chanting that we had better get onto it now. Well, 2024 is a special year, being exactly three decades since that 4-day event in 1994 – when we presented the world with our home-made miracle.
Seriously? Well, it has become the self-congratulating accepted memory – so this is as good a time as any to revisit what really happened. As for my photographic memory about it, I owe that to Dr Anthea Jeffery’s book People’s War – new light on the struggle for South Africa, published by Jonathan Ball in 2009.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) was included six days before the election. Ballot papers were already printed and 80 million IFP stickers now had to be distributed to 10’600 polling stations … wait for it.
On April 26, the first polling day, voters formed those snaking queues we remember with pride. But why did that happen?
One reason, many voting stations did not open at all. Others had severe shortages of ballot papers, the special ink to mark voters’ hands, the ultraviolet light to detect the ink, or the IFP stickers. The chaos continued on April 27, then April 28 was declared another public holiday – and many people voted on April 29. Some polling stations still had not opened, but the IEC said enough was enough.
There was no voter’s roll, at the ANC’s insistence. People could vote wherever they wanted, not only where they lived. It was thus completely legal to bus voters to marginal areas. The ANC also insisted that obsolete ID documents be allowed and that people with not even those receive temporary ones. The NP objected at first, but later folded. Everyone could vote, as often as they liked. In southern Natal, for instance, votes outnumbered the population by 2:1.
A police investigation found that “millions of foreign nationals had fraudulently” received voter cards.
The safeguard of special ink and ultraviolet light broke down widely. People who had placed their hands in bleach and admitted doing so, were allowed to vote (again).
At numerous polling stations, particularly where the IFP had strong support, the IFP stickers simply did not arrive. Millions of them were later found in IEC warehouses.
Then came the counting.
On day one, April 30, a vital safeguard was scrapped: the number of ballot papers issued to a polling station would no longer be reconciled with the number of votes.
As controversy dragged on, NP and ANC leaders began to realise they were facing a failed election, not a democratic miracle. That is when they started negotiating again, this time not about elections but about the result. De Klerk, Mandela and IEC chairman Judge Johann Kriegler met to find a solution. A government source said they “decided that free and fair elections had to be declared, come hell or high water”.
The hatchets were buried and between them they agreed on a result. Judge Kriegler declared it “beyond review or appeal”.
He resigned before the next election.
