Election observers concerned about lack of women candidates in elections

Political parties should be encouraged to promote gender equality as there were fewer women than men on their candidate lists despite the majority of voters and those working at voting stations being women, election observers said on Friday. 

The Sadc Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) released a preliminary statement on Wednesday's national and provincial elections. It conducted its observer mission jointly with the AU Electoral Observation Mission, the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA) and the Electoral Commissions Forum of Sadc Countries Observation Mission.

A common observation by the missions was a lack of women among the candidates in the highly-contested elections.

Despite the country having a relatively high number of women in political positions in bodies such as the National Assembly, many political parties had predominantly men as candidates.

In this year’s elections, women made up 55% of registered voters while 41.86% of candidates on party lists were women.

Seven parties had 40% female representation, 14 had 30% and 15 parties had 50% female representation on their lists, said head of the EISA observation mission and former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan.

“The mission observed that most of the polling staff on election day were women, reflecting the demographic reality of the majority of the population.

“The low representation of women candidates across the political spectrum remains a concern,” Jonathan said.

However, it was mostly women who registered to vote while IEC officials who worked the voting stations were largely women, said former deputy president of Zambia Enock Kavinde.

“In the context of the proportional representation system, a few political parties utilise the ‘zebra list’ system whereby a male candidate is followed by a female candidate or vice versa on the party election list. In 2024, only 15 political parties out of 52 on the national compensatory ballot list achieved a 50-50 gender representation. Consequently, almost 60% of the candidates were men. This is despite the reassurances that the mission received from all political parties that we consulted that they are committed to gender equality,” he said.

Head of the AU election observation mission and former Kenya president Uhuru Kenyatta commended the country’s women and youth for participating in various roles throughout the elections. He however noted that there was no legislation to regulate women's representation and gender equality in politics.

“Despite South Africa's current cabinet achieving a 50/50 gender balance, women holding key cabinet positions since the country’s democratic dispensation in 1994 and societal support for gender equality in political representation, women still face various obstacles such as patriarchy, harassment and discrimination in political participation,” Kenyatta said. 

The missions recommended electoral reform compelling political parties to have a quota system for women candidates during elections.

The observers also raised concern about last-minute changes to the Electoral Matters Amendment Act, which was gazetted on May 7 and took effect immediately the next day, three weeks before elections.

This led to confusion among parties and stakeholders regarding the limit and disclosure threshold of donations to political parties and independent candidates, Kavinde said.

“In view of the potential of those affected, to breach the law and therefore attract criminal sanctions, this lack of clarity may have been addressed had the relevant amendments been made within a reasonable time before elections.”

The missions recommended that electoral laws be amended early in the electoral cycle to allow parties and independent candidates to familiarise themselves with the electoral laws.

Meanwhile, the country’s seventh democratic elections had been peaceful, free and fair with isolated incidents of violence, they said.

98% of polling stations proceeded without interruption except for seven cases of interruption which were caused by the malfunctioning of the voting management device (VMD) which delayed the process by between 45 minutes to two hours.

Other interruptions included police officers leaving their posts at polling stations to control noise and disruption by political parties set up outside the polling stations and isolated incidents of intimidation of electoral officers by some voters due to the absence of security.

“The mission congratulates the people of ... [SA] on the manner in which they conducted themselves during the electoral period,” Kavinde said.

“They were able to exercise their democratic right to express their choice. Despite the isolated incidents, the contesting political parties and independent candidates are commended for their role in the electoral period. Generally, they showed a spirit of tolerance and ensured that their supporters remained calm and restrained throughout the electioneering process,” he added. 

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