Last week I started my new internship at the IEC (The Independent Electoral Commission). Im working in the communications department, and regardless of the fact that nothing there relates to anything that I study, it has been absolutely fabulous.The IEC was formed by the 1996 constitution, and a Chapter 9 Institution. Chapter 9 of the SA constitution created several organizations that would help support the new democracy, some of the other groups that were created at the South African Human Rights Commission, the Commission for Gender Equality, and the Public Protector, which investigates any complaints about the government. They are all independent of the government, but are still responsible to parliament since they get a good deal of government funds.
SO I'm working for the IEC, which runs the elections, and for anyone who doesn't know yet, on the 22nd there are going to be national and provincial elections here. The elections that are about to go on are also probably the most interesting/influential ones since 1994.
Something about me that makes my placement here even better is this: politics are my crack. I love them, and frankly, I was experiencing a shortage of political drama in my life after Obama got elected. SO for anyone that has a similar hole in their life, I would suggest doing some reading about SA... its like a soap opera. Except that its better, and crazier.
Part of my job being in the communications department is to keep up with what all of the SA papers are saying about the elections, and politics and the whole thing, So I do get to indulge myself all day hearing about Helen Zille's latest crazy comments about summoning the army or who the ANC got out of jail just in time for elections.
But in lieu of talking about politics for an entire blog, Ill talk about the press tour that I went on yesterday. Part of the job of the IEC is to set up voting stations all over the city so that people can vote. Some of the problems with this are that, there is not exactly buildings everywhere that people need to vote. Compounding that problem is that in the places where there are no buildings, there also tends to be the highest population density, the least space, and the most politically charged people.
So the press tour was to take some journalists around and show them what the situation is like that people have to vote in, ideally we wanted to show this so that coverage of these areas might be different on election day.
In these voting stations, it is not surprising if there are problems on election day, its what happens when you have a few thousand people standing in a line for hours in a crowded area on a hot day.
But when that type of thing happens, the media tends to jump on it and average people tend to just add it to the list of reasons that they stay away from townships, because in their mind, the people in Khayletisha are voting in the same conditions as them, and they just can't understand why they are so violent.
So we were trying to point that kind of thing out to the press, and show them that not everyone gets to have the same experience on election day.
The tour went to 4 voting sites in Khayletisha, and instead of talking about it, I suppose I will try to do exactly what the press tour did, which is show you.
The house in the background here is going to be used as a voting station.
This is where another few thousand people are going to voting. Its basically just a space between buildings.
This is how you get to that space.
Needless to say, the trip was enlightening.
