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Voting station allegedly damaged in Limpopo

There are reports of damage to property at a voting station in Lebowakgomo, outside Polokwane, in Limpopo, after a ballot box bearing no indication of a voting district was detected.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) says party agents and members of the community allegedly stormed into the station on Saturday night. Police were called to the station to diffuse the situation.

The IEC says the crowd went on the rampage, accusing IEC officials of voter rigging.

The Provincial Electoral Office, Nkaro Mateta says some ballot boxes were damaged.

“They even affected one of the boxes that had nothing to do with these unmarked boxes. I think this matter is even more serious and they even damaged municipal property. How is it possible that one error that can be accounted for, [can make people] damaged the gates of the municipality,” explains Mateta.

Update on Day 2 special votes in Limpopo

Deployment of security officers

Limpopo’s Community Safety MEC Mavhungu-Lerule Ramakhanya says more than 5 000 police officers, traffic officers and SANDF members will be deployed across the province on voting day.

A higher number of security officers will be deployed in the Vhembe and Capricorn districts, which have several places identified as hot spots.

Ramakhanya says the special focus will be put areas such as Mogalakwena, Lephalale, Tzaneen, Ephraim Mogale and Elias Motsoaledi municipalities.

“Our team is comprised of police officers, traffic officers, SANDF members and the highest deployment for tomorrow [Monday] is Vhembe and Capricorn. We will also pay special attention to the identified medium-risk areas which are your Greater Tzaneen area, your Lephalale, your Collins Chabane, your Mogalakwena Local Municipality, your Ellias Motsoaledi.”

Improved service delivery

Some residents in Bela Bela, Limpopo, say they’re expecting to see improved service delivery after the local government elections. Residents say they will be happy to cast their vote on Monday.

They also say that the elected councillors should not abandon communities after being elected.

“I’m ready to vote. I wish our voting must go well. I’m a registered voter and I’m going to vote. After we vote for these people they just run away like I don’t know. The service here in Bela Bela – out of ten I can rate it seven out of ten – because we have many parties in the municipality,” laments one voter.

Complaint with IEC

The EFF and the Mpumalanga Party in Dennilton in the Elias Motsoaledi Municipality in Limpopo have lodged a complaint with the IEC. This follows allegations that some ballot boxes were taken to the home of one of the presiding officers.

Party agents for both parties say the incident happened after the closure of the voting station at Mthombo-Wefundo primary school on Saturday. -Additional reporting by Michael Makungo

 

 

 

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More than 18 000 police officers to be deployed in KZN for elections

More than 18 000 law enforcement officers will be deployed in KwaZulu-Natal for the Local Government Elections.
Already two people and nine police officers were injured during a protest at the Mistake Farm in uMzinto on Saturday. Residents are unhappy about their councillor candidates.
The voting station at Mistake Farm in uMzinto, south of Durban, remains closed.

Shooting in Umzinto: Jayed-Leigh Paulse updates: 



On Sunday, Police Minister Bheki Cele, addressed officers in Durban, before visiting a number of hotspots in the province. Cele says there are about 272 high-risk police stations in the country with more than 50% of them in KwaZulu-Natal.
Addressing police officers in the province ahead of their deployment to hotspots for violence during the election,  Cele says the province does not only lead in hotspots but also in the number of councillor candidates who have been killed.
The Police Minister says the killings weren’t happening in just one political party.
“For instance in PMB Tshangase is an Eff candidate, Mkhize here in Ethekwini is an ANC candidate, Qwabe is ward 17 in Zululand kwaNongoma is NFP. So you have an extra job of looking after the lives of politicians across the board in this province across the political spectrum.”

Police Minister addresses media on police deployment to voting stations: 

Stern warning

Voting stations remained closed at Mistake Farm following the community protest on Saturday. Cele had a stern warning for citizens who prevent others from voting by closing down voting stations or intimidating IEC staff members.

“Police are here to support the IEC. People who want to vote must be allowed and given that opportunity. Police must remove any form of any huddle the burning tires including people standing on the gates locking, police will assist IEC to open that.”

There was a heavy police presence at Mistake farm on Sunday. A traditional leader in the area Induna Fana Mbutho says this could have been avoided since the political party involved knew, for 8 years, that the community was unhappy with the councillor.

“The community does not want to vote for another political party but this one all they want is a change of councillor candidate.”

Cele says voting stations will be open on Monday and police will be monitoring all the hotspots. He urged all officers to steer clear of politics and uphold the law.

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Armed group kills five policemen in northern Burkina Faso

Unidentified armed men killed five police officers in an attack on security forces in northern Burkina Faso in the early hours of Sunday, in which around 15 of the attackers died, the security ministry said in a statement.

The incident occurred in Sourou province in the borderlands near Mali, where groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State have increased attacks in recent years despite international efforts to stamp them out.

The attackers struck at 5 a.m. and around 15 of them were killed in the ensuing fight, the ministry said.

Attacks have surged across Africa’s Sahel region, killing thousands and driving millions from their homes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. About 1.2 million people have been displaced by the violence in Burkina Faso alone.

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Everything running smoothly at Results Centre: IEC

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) says everything is running smoothly at the Results Centre in Pretoria. The centre is operational again and it is all systems go for the Local Government Elections.

The centre was evacuated on Saturday evening. Just after 6 o’clock on Saturday night, the IEC’s Results Operation Centre (ROC) in Pretoria had to be evacuated due to a power outage.

The ROC is the electoral commission’s nerve centre during national elections. It is where the capturing, auditing, collating and announcing of elections results happen.  The main aim of the centre is to promote the transparency of the electoral process.

Emergency Services says an electrical fault led to the evacuation. IEC officials have disputed reports that there was a fire at the Results Operations Centre.

The IEC explains that: “By the time we left it was already quite late in the evening and there was no sign of any damage whatsoever to give an impression that there was a fire. So again this morning we are fully operational and we are back at work.”

The SABC’s foreign editor Sophie Mokoena was at the ROC preparing for a live show when the incident occurred.

“We are standing here outside the IEC national results centre and we were inside preparing for our show that starts at 8 tonight Elections 360 degrees when suddenly we didn’t have power. When we made inquiries we were told there were problems with the generator. We did call Eskom to check whether the problem is not based on load shedding and Eskom was quite clear that there was no load shedding.”

Tshwane Emergency Services says there was a faulty electrical circuit.  “I can confirm that there was no fire at the IEC results centre. The only report that we received from our members is that an electric circuit on a DB BOX became faulty resulting in the power being cut off. And the centre had to be evacuated to give the technicians more time to fix the electrical problem,”  says Tshwane Emergency Services spokesperson, Charles Mabaso.

IEC’s Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo on measures in place at the ROC in Pretoria:

 

 

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Tigrayan and Oromo forces say they have seized towns on Ethiopian highway

Two different groups fighting Ethiopia’s central government said they had seized control of towns on Sunday as the prime minister appealed for citizens to take up arms.

The spreading conflict threatens to further destabilise Africa’s second most populous nation, once considered a stable Western ally in a volatile region.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed urged citizens to join the fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party in control of the rebellious northern region of Tigray, after Tigrayan forces said they took another town on a highway linking the capital of the landlocked nation to the port of Djibouti.

“Our people should march with any weapon and resources they have to defend, repulse and bury the terrorist TPLF,” Abiy said in a Facebook post on Sunday night.

CLAIMS OF GAINS

TPLF spokesperson Getachew Reda said Tigrayan forces have seized the town of Kombolcha and its airport in the Amhara region. He spoke to Reuters by phone from an unknown location.

On Sunday night, insurgents from Oromiya, Ethiopia’s most populous region, said they had also seized the town of Kemise, 53 km (33 miles) south of Kombolcha on the same highway to the capital Addis Ababa.

Odaa Tarbii, a spokesperson for the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), said the group had taken Kemise, 325 km (200 miles) from Addis Ababa, and were engaging government forces.

The OLA is an outlawed splinter group of the Oromo Liberation Front, a formerly banned opposition group that returned from exile after Abiy took office in 2018. The Oromo are Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group; many of their political leaders have been imprisoned under Abiy’s government.

In August the OLA and the TPLF announced a military alliance, heaping pressure on the central government.

Central government spokesperson Legesse Tulu, Ethiopian military spokesperson Col. Getnet Adane and Amhara regional spokesperson Gizachew Muluneh did not immediately respond requests for comment on the TPLF and the OLA’s claims.

Reuters could not independently verify Getachew’s claim as phone lines in Kombolcha appeared to be down on Sunday. Reuters could not reach anyone in Kemise.

On Sunday, the Amhara regional government said in a statement “all government institutions must suspend their regular activities and should direct their budget and all their resources to the survival campaign officials on every level should mobilise and lead…to the front.”

They announced a curfew of 8 p.m. and urged citizens to provide private vehicles to support the campaign.

YEAR-LONG WAR

War broke nearly a year ago between federal troops and the TPLF, which dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was appointed in 2018. The conflict has killed thousands of civilians and forced more than two million people to flee their homes.

Tigrayan forces were initially beaten back, but recaptured most of Tigray in July. They then pushed into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions, displacing hundreds of thousands  more civilians.

Regional forces from Amhara have fought alongside the military in Tigray. The two regions of Amhara and Tigray have a long-running boundary dispute over farmland in Western Tigray, currently under the control of the Amhara administration.

In mid-October, the Tigrayan forces said the military had mounted an offensive to push them out of Amhara. The military has accused the Tigrayan forces of starting the recent round of fighting.

Tigrayan forces have said they will keep fighting until Amhara forces leave the heavily fortified area of Western Tigray, and until the government permits the free movement of aid into the rest of Tigray.

The United Nations has previously accused the government of a de facto blockade of Tigray, where the UN says around 400,000 people are living in famine conditions. The government denies blocking aid.

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