• The IEC has warned of repercussions for MK Party supporters’ alleged invasion of a storage facility for election material.
• Police visibility is set to be increased across the country.
• Find everything you need to know about the 2024 general elections on News24’s Elections Hub.

The Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) is contemplating legal action against the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party after a group of its supporters allegedly invaded an IEC storage facility and threatened an elections official over the weekend. 

The IEC moved swiftly on Sunday to stamp out disinformation MK Party members had allegedly spread about a normal logistics procedure at a storage facility in Hammarsdale, Mpumalanga, which supporters had “overrun” and had begun “interfering” in an “unauthorised and unlawful manner”. 

This came as the electoral commission prepared for the first special votes to be cast in the country on Monday and Tuesday.

An analyst has warned that the MK Party, led by former president Jacob Zuma, has shown that its central method of campaigning is through misdeeds, such as this, and that there may be further attempts to disrupt the polls on Wednesday.

The IEC revealed that the MK Party had taken videos of the material stored at the site over the weekend.

But it said the storage facility was part of a regular logistics exercise. Ballots are transported there to be closer to voting stations to ensure they can reach voting stations quickly on election day and that the voting stations can open on time. They are heavily guarded, including when they are transported.

It is unclear how the MK Party supporters managed to “overrun” the facility, despite the security measures in place to protect it.

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An IEC official in eThekwini was also “accosted” by MK Party supporters over the weekend in the middle of the night at their private residence and questioned about a similar storage facility nearby. 

IEC deputy chief electoral officer Masego Sheburi said there would be “repercussions” for the invasion of the storage facility and threats to its staff.

The commission was dealing with the matter along with the SA Police and would be able to provide further details at its next media briefing. 

In a statement on Sunday, the IEC said: 

President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on Sunday and expressed concern about the incident.

He called on parties, candidates, supporters and all citizens to “refrain from any action that could interfere” with the electoral process.

He also expressed confidence in the IEC’s ability to run a free and fair election and commended the commission for its “impressive work” in preparing for the polls.

More than 1.6 million South Africans are voting on Monday and Tuesday. They are those who applied for special votes, which include voting at stations as well as home visits by electoral commission officers.

The polls open for the rest of the country on Wednesday.

Also on Sunday, police deputy commissioner and National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (Natjoints) co-chairperson Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili told journalists that the country’s security apparatus was taking seriously warnings that private companies, such as FirstRand and Fidelity, had issued about potential protests by the MK Party during and in the aftermath of the elections.

“Yes, we are aware of such. We have put plans in place… should this be executed, we will rise to the occasion… we are not saying that it will not happen, we are saying we have plans in place and we will respond accordingly,” she said.

Police visibility is set to be increased across the country.

In a tacit reference claims on social media that the electoral body was preparing to “rig elections” in favour of the ANC, Mosikili warned that spreading fake news and incitement on any platform would “not be tolerated”.

“Our intelligence communities and cybercrime units are closely monitoring online users. You are warned not to step out of line,” she said. 

Supporters of Zuma, including his daughter Duduzile Sambudla-Zuma, used social media to support various acts of violence and looting during the 2021 riots, which led to the death of more than 300 people and caused losses to the economy to the tune of billions of rands.

On Sunday, Sambudla-Zuma began circulating footage of the IEC storage facility, with the narrative that the motive for storing election material was nefarious – which the electoral commission dismissed as false.

Electoral analyst at the Electoral Institute of SA (EISA) Ebrahim Fakir, said the MK Party thrived on such situations because they give the party “oxygen”.

“They have no other legitimate way of campaigning. It is the same modus operandi we saw before the July 2021 unrest. This political project has little to do with ideology or even politics, it is simply a spoiler party,” he said. 

Fakir said Zuma and the MK Party were fighting tooth and nail to remain relevant and were aware that if Zuma went to jail, those implicated in corruption and state capture would be at risk of jail time too.

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These supporters of MK, he added, also have an interest in ensuring that Ramaphosa’s clean-up project – which has started shifting the corruption needle nationally – does not impact them locally. 

“Ramaphosa’s sort of clean-up nationally has seen the eating displaced to the local level where it is more concentrated and intense. Many Zuma supporters are now accessing state largesse at that level and they are worried that once Ramaphosa wins an election with a strong hand, you have a relatively coherent ANC, that clean-up happening at the national level will start filtering down to the provinces and the local level,” he said. 

Fakir also stressed that the MK Party was unlikely to do well nationally, ending on around 4%, but would seek to do as much damage as possible in other ways. 

“Their whole project is to disrupt, any stability for them spells disaster. Society has to stop giving oxygen to this,” he said.

He added that it was interesting that Zuma was happily contesting the elections and that his key backers faced little repercussions over the July 2021 riots, despite the many families affected by the deaths and the ensuing economic damage.