the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa

Bear in mind, it is illegal to strike on Election Day. The Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) is battling to avert disaster, as employees and trade unions threaten to down tools.

As 8 May draws ever-nearer, the palpable anticipation is reaching a boiling point, on many intersecting fronts. Political parties have wrapped-up their protracted campaign efforts leaving voters to their own idiosyncratic devices. With ballot boxes at the ready, the 2019 elections, touted as being the most vital since the country’s dawn of democracy, are set to define the future of South Africa.

Yet, dissidence within the ranks of the IEC is threatening to tarnish the organization’s promise of ‘free and fair elections’. The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) issued a statement on Monday morning, calling for urgent intervention from the IEC. According to NEHAWU spokesperson, Khaya Xaba, the issues relating to the labour
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The Dagga Party of South Africa is hoping to “#HotBoxTheHouse” as it prepares to contest this year’s elections and potentially have a say on cannabis legislation in Parliament, if it can raise the hefty R200 000 registration free.

“I ask you to stand ready to stand together around the cannabis tree at elections 2019,” party leader Jeremy Acton wrote on Facebook as he rallied like-minded thinkers to register to vote.

Also known as Iqela Lentsango, the party wants to be sitting among the legislators who will rework the law to regulate the use of the plant after the Constitutional Court ruled last year that criminalising private use was unconstitutional.

It tried to run in the 2014 general elections but could not afford the deposit at the time and so missed the deadline to be included on the ballot papers.

The Constitutional Court gave Parliament two years from September 2018 to revisit laws which Acton and co-campaigner Garreth Pr
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