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UK bars South African expat voters’ protests

Metropolitan police asks South African expats to cancel March 14 London protest march after three Northern Ireland terror murders

Adriana Stuijt

Feb 25, 2009 - South African government denies voting rights to 2-million expats

SAYFA London March for your right to vote 2008Picture:  December 2008 demonstration in downtown London by expatriate South Africans who demand voting facilities at foreign legations for April 22 2009 election.Vote it up!

March 11 2009 -- Plans for large-scale demonstrations in central London are being scrapped by the London Metropolitan Police after the recent deadly terror attacks in Northern Ireland. Two UK soldiers and a policeman were shot dead  in the first such attacks in the past eleven years.

London's estimated 600,000 expat South Africans had planned to march through downtown London on March 14 in support of their their voting rights abroad, planning to mass near the South African embassy in Trafalgar Square. They have now been asked to postpone their plans upon the request of the Metropolitan Police, says organiser SA Youth Forum Abroad.

SAYCO still wants to publicise the fact that the vast majority of South Africans forced to live and work abroad aren't able to cast their votes at their foreign embassies but, said its spokesman, they would postpone it to a later date 'for the safety of London'. see

The new British security measures follow three terror murders in Northern Ireland: on March 7, two thus far unidentified UK soldiers were shot dead at Massareene barracks in county Antrim in Northern Ireland. The next day, at the Drumbeg estate in Craigavon, County Armagh, police constable Stephen Carroll was shot dead by a sniper. see.

Due to the tightened security measures, London's next large-scale gathering will be its annual Horse Guards parades from Buckingham Palace from March 27 through 30.

South African expats await voting-rights ruling

Some 2million South African expats working abroad demand that they be given voting facilities at foreign legations – basing their equal voting rights on the country’s Constitution. They held a protest march at the SA Embassy in London in December 2008. However, their planned protest on March 14 2009 was cancelled by the London Metropolitian police because of terror attacks in Northern Ireland. Vote it up!

Meanwhile in South Africa, a Constitutional Court decision over the expat voting-rights battle is still being awaited. Three political parties and a civil-rights organisation are still waiting to hear the Constitutional Court verdict in Johannesburg about the issue. see

The Constitutional Court was asked to rule on the constitutionality of these voting-rights demands launched Friday March 6 by the Freedom Front Plus, the Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party, as well as by civil-rights organisation AfriForum for the voting rights of South Africans working overseas in the election on April 22.

Afrikaner_representatives_UNPO_conferenceBrusselsMay2008_AfrikanerRepresentatives Last month, the Freedom Front Plus party (left) on behalf of expat South African teacher Willem Richter (in the UK) had obtained a successful ruling from the Pretoria High Court, stating that the South African government and its Electoral Commission (IEC) were infringing on the country's equal-voting rights provisions in the Constitution by refusing voting rights to some 2-million expats through its foreign legations. The Freedom Front Plus, which represents the Afrikaner electorate in parliament, says Afrikaners have become so disenfranchised by the ANC-regime that they have joined UNPO in the Hague – the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples’ Organisation – to give Afrikaners an international platform to represent their civil rights.

Election date rushed through before court decision:
The country's next election date has meanwhile hurriedly been announced by the caretaker-ANC government for April 22. The ANC-regime opposes the Pretoria High Court ruling and does not want to make foreign legations available on polling day for anyone except their own staff and their relatives.
To allow the estimated 2-million South Africans abroad to still be allowed to register for voting at the embassies and legations on April 22, the court was also asked to order that special provisions be made to extend the legal deadline for the registration for this group: normally, under the rules laid down by the Independent Electoral Commission, no new voters may be registered after the election date has been ratified in Parliament.

ANC opposes voting rights for 2-m expats:
The ANC-government fears that the large number of South Africans working abroad will upset the electoral apple-cart to much and is doing everything in its power to prevent citizens living and working abroad, from being able to vote. It is actively opposing the application in court.

The South African government's Home Affairs Department and the Independent Electoral Commission have submitted arguments against the application -- claiming it 'would be "a logistical nightmare to ensure that all citizens could cast their ballots overseas.'

They were allowed to vote before - why not now?
However it's been done before without any kind of 'logistical problems": the last time all South Africans working and living abroad were able to vote was in the first democratic election in 1994 - and many hundreds of thousands then voted from foreign embassies and legations, mainly in the United Kingdom.

The British Broadcasting Corporation said in a separate report earlier this month that there are least 600,000 often highly-skilled South Africans living and working in the UK alone - mostly educators and medical staff -- and that there are at least 2-million expats living in some 46 other countries including the UK. Most were forced abroad by the high crime rate, and also to seek work because of South Africa's own black-economic-empowerment job reservation laws, which bar most 'whites' from working in the country of their birth.

Since the 1994 election which put ANC-leader Nelson Mandela into power, foreign voting facilities have however been denied to all but just an elite few - temporary travellers and embassy personnel and their dependants.

Meanwhile, South Africans abroad are urged to submit their names to a register located at the Freedom Front Plus party headquarters – just in case the Constitutional Court rules in their favour: here