When I was 13 — typically worried about boarding school, girls and my own coming of age — something very profound happened. I watched the birth of my nation.
I watched history happen and real leadership emerge. I watched the death of decades of tyrannical, unspeakable minority rule and the birth of an exemplary Constitution and a democracy I could call my own. And I watched as my compatriots voted — almost 16-million of them, in lines that stretched for miles, staunch NP supporters alongside old women who had never voted before. My understanding of democracy was born in April 1994: each South African would get one vote, one equal voice and we could all participate.
Today, two months before our fourth national election, I find myself in the United States — staring in from the outside, a spectator to the process, effectively disenfranchised.
Make no mistake, the situation is better than it was a while ago. The high court has ruled that citizens living abroad are entitled to vote — five years after an amendment restricted overseas voting privileges to those beyond the Republic’s borders for government duty, holiday, business trips, studies or international sporting events. The case was a slam-dunk affair — our Bill of Rights guarantees every adult citizen the right to vote in any election — and the previous disenfranchisement of South African expats was clearly, flagrantly, embarrassingly unconstitutional.
Although the ruling is as significant as it was obvious, it doesn’t really solve the problem. Instead of giving the Constitutional Court and the Independent Electoral Commission time to work things out, President Kgalema Motlanthe proclaimed the election date within three days of the high court’s ruling. That proclamation activates a frustratingly brief window period: we have just 15 days to apply for a special vote. That time is now ticking by and the IEC hasn’t even updated its website. Newly eligible voters can only download old forms and the VEC-1 application still has no category for those living and working beyond our borders.
There are other problems too. I’ve never travelled with my green ID book and I won’t have it come April 22. I have a dozen other forms of identification — including my passport and my fingerprints — but I won’t be able to vote. Many South Africans will have to travel thousands of kilometres to find a polling station. And what about those without access to the IEC’s website, or those who haven’t heard of the ruling?
These problems won’t be solved by April — and South Africans living abroad are at fault for taking so long to file suit. But they must be solved, as quickly and as simply as possible.
Americans living abroad log on, submit their details and have an absentee ballot mailed to them, anywhere in the world; they fill it in, mail it back and the deal is sealed. We could do the same, or have our ballots certified at police stations, or sign them with our fingerprints. There must be solutions and we should find them.
We’ve already won half the battle: a constitutionally guaranteed right, perhaps the most important of them all, has been restored. Now we need to make it work.
Nic Marais is studying law at Yale. Until June last year, he anchored Kfm Breakfast in Cape Town
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