IEC: Homelessness on the agenda for voters in 2021

The Denis Hurley Centre, supported by like-minded NGOs and faith-based organisations across the country has placed the problem of homelessness in the spotlight ahead of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) run South African municipal elections to be held on 1 November 2021.

 The DHC has taken the lead in eThekwini on a series of initiatives to campaign for the implementation of a National Homeless Manifesto. In each city, political parties and individual candidates will be challenged to ensure that the needs of the homeless are firmly on the political agenda in the run up to the Municipal elections. The DHC is also helping homeless people to register with the IEC to vote.

These campaign initiatives are part of a countrywide project of the National Homeless Network, which comprises more than 40 organisations from 15 towns and cities across the country.

 “We want to encourage voters to think about the issues that affect life in eThekwini for the new Municipality to be able to prioritise,” said DHC director Raymond Perrier.

“We hope that ordinary voters will take note of which parties and which candidates endorse the National Homeless Manifesto for each city and thus consider this when they are deciding how to cast their vote. We want to ensure that issues that affect the poorest citizens of Durban are not neglected,” Perrier said.

“The campaign argues that there are simple, far-reaching policies which are neither costly nor difficult to achieve, which can be implemented by the incoming eThekwini municipal government that would benefit homeless people,” he says.

More than 30 Durban-based NGOs, academic institutions, religious leaders and corporates have put their weight behind the campaign.  The national ambassador for the campaign is Rev Prof Barney Pityana who has been Chair of the South African Human Rights Commission, a member of the African Union’s Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Vice-Chancellor of UNISA.  In Durban, creatives Mpume Mthombeni, Jailoshni Naidoo, Simthandile Mtolo, Samora Chapman, Lisa Bobbert and Aaron McIlroy have come out in support of the campaign.

 “Defending and promoting Human Rights must be foremost in our minds in preparing for the municipal elections,” Pityana said. 

“The issues facing homeless people in all our cities are a good example of this.  Decisions and policies from local government have a major impact on the lives of homeless people and their ability to enjoy their human rights.  We are encouraging all voters to challenge political parties and local candidates on whether they are willing to support the National Homeless Manifesto,” he said. 

 The National Homeless Network has drafted a Homeless Manifesto ahead of the elections. Focus areas, generated in consultation with homeless people, include shelter, health, sanitation, safety and work.

 Part of the campaign to support the homeless is to help them to register with the IEC to vote. The DHC  hosted the IEC for voter registration this weekend with a particular focus on homeless voters.

The majority of homeless people are South African citizens who are entitled to register with the IEC to vote in the elections. However, most are not registered because of the assumed need for an address. The IEC has established that they can enable homeless people to register through a legitimate interpretation of the address requirement.

 Working with members of the National Homeless Network in the run-up to the 2019 National and Provincial elections, the IEC succeeded in registering, for the first time, hundreds of homeless citizens who had not voted before.

The DHC is an IEC station both for registration and for voting.