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President Cyril Ramaphosa will proclaim a date for the upcoming general elections in the next 15 days, according to the presidency.
“If you count from tomorrow [Thursday], the president will announce the election date within 15 days as of tomorrow. So, that should put everyone’s minds at ease that the election date will be announced,” said presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya.
Magwenya made the remarks on Wednesday afternoon during a briefing on the president’s public programme held at the Imbizo Media Centre in Cape Town.
Following the Electoral Commission of SA’s (IEC) second and final voter registration drive this past weekend, there has been increasing pressure on Ramaphosa to proclaim a date for the hotly contested national and provincial elections, marking the 30th anniversary of the country’s democracy.
READ: Consultations with Ramaphosa on election date almost done, says IEC
On Tuesday, IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said the commission was “nearing the completion” of its consultations with the presidency before Ramaphosa could announce when South Africans could go to the polls.
According to Magwenya, it was unlikely that Ramaphosa would announce a date for the elections during his state of the nation address (Sona) on Thursday. He said there was no crisis or delay in the announcement of the date as the Constitution permits the president to proclaim the election date within 90 days of the closure of the current Parliament and provincial legislature's terms.
Magwenya said:
“There is no delay because there was never an agreed timeline as to when he will announce the date. Secondly, this Sona is different and unique in so many ways and I think it’s important that it’s allowed its own expression, and that South Africans can take out of it the sort of celebratory element of it… it is also the last Sona under the sixth administration,” he added.
What to expect from Sona?
In his address to the nation, Ramaphosa will reflect on the last 30 years of the country’s democracy under the ANC-led government as well as the work of the sixth administration over the past five years, Magwenya said.
He added:
READ: Ramaphosa’s Sona speech likely to be just more empty promises
With both Houses of Parliament, the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces having passed the controversial National Health Insurance Bill, Ramaphosa has been largely expected to announce the signing of the bill into law during his speech on Thursday.
However, Magwenya shot down these expectations, saying the president was still consulting his legal team on the legislation.
“You will appreciate that the president has a constitutional obligation to satisfy himself that the process that the bill has gone through will stand scrutiny [and] that all the submissions that were made during the public participation process were carefully considered before the bill was passed.
“This is his constitutional duty and the legal team is hard at work, not only on the NHI Bill, and it’s important that the president satisfies himself that all those processes, prior to the signing of the bill, were conducted in the earnest manner that our Constitution envisages,” he said.
Business organisations, including Business Unity SA and Business4SA, and some civil society organisations have petitioned Ramaphosa not to sign the bill into law. They have argued, among others, that the bill in its current form is unconstitutional and unimplementable as it will cost the country billions of rand annually.
Ramaphosa is set to deliver his last Sona for the sixth administration at Cape Town City Hall at 7pm on Thursday, 8 February.
