Southern African observers monitoring next week’s South African elections are to seek assurances from the South African government that they will be protected against xenophobic attack while doing their jobs.

Some members of the 48-person Southern African Development Community (SADC) Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) are not willing to enter areas that are prone to xenophobic attack.

This was disclosed by the head of SEOM, Zambian foreign minister Joseph Malanji, at the launch of the mission in Pretoria on Monday. It comprises election observers from 10 SADC countries.

He said SEOM officials would be meeting police and officials from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) “to ensure adequate security for our mission. We can’t be hindered because of this vice”.

He said he was glad that Dirco had already provided assurances that it would take action. Without protection “we will be as vulnerable as anyone”, Malanji added.

He said xenophobic attacks in South Africa were “quite worrying” not only to SEOM but generally. No country should try to isolate itself from other countries in this era as all needed some services provided by expatriates.

But he added that it was not his business now to take up the general issue of xenophobia. He recalled that African ambassadors based in Pretoria had recently made a “demarche” – a diplomatic intervention –to the South African government on this issue. This followed attacks against foreign nationals, mainly Malawians, in the Durban area.

Malanji was responding to questions after he had said in his formal address at the SEOM launch that some members of South African communities, “have taken advantage of the forthcoming elections to heighten violent service delivery protests, attacks against African foreigners and their property, and used these to threaten the peaceful conduct of the elections.”

He said this was one of the concerns which SADC’s pre-election assessment mission had noted in its meetings with various South African political stakeholders.

Another concern was that although women constitute 54,5% (or 14,7 million individuals) of registered voters, they form far less than 50% of candidates on the parties’ election lists.

“Political parties in general mention gender and youth equality in elected positions, but only one political party actually has a policy that it fully implements with respect to a 50-50 gender representation quota,” Malanji added.

Another concern was youth apathy. Because these elections were happening 25 years after the advent of democracy, it had been expected there would be a surge in the registration of voters between 18 and 25 years.

However, the youth had remained apathetic, both as voters and as candidates. A total of 9.8 million eligible voters had not registered to vote, 60% of whom were youths.

Overall though, Malanji said that since the first democratic elections in 1994, despite challenging conditions in the aftermath of dismantling apartheid, “South Africa has progressed remarkably well, serving in many respects as an example to the rest of the region.

“SADC thus duly recognises and acknowledges these tremendous strides towards the consolidation of democracy.”

He said SADC had noted that South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission had managed to register 26,7 million voters, put in place ballot measures to accommodate a record 48 political parties, 10,000 candidates on the National Assembly party lists and 8,000 candidates on provincial assembly lists. The IEC was ready to run 22,924 voting stations and had already published their exact locations.

Stergomena Lawrence Tax, SADC’s executive secretary, said SADC was observing the South African elections in three phases.

The election-election observation mission had been deployed between 4 and 9 April to assess if the legal, political and security environments were conducive to holding credible elections conforming to the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections.

The pre-election observation phase would continue until May 7, the day before the elections. The elections observation phase would take place on election day, May 8, and was intended to assess the electoral processes and procedures and whether the environment would be conducive for voters to exercise their civic rights.

The post-election phase would start immediately after the elections and would aim to promote electoral integrity and peace and stability in the post-election period, according to the SADC election guidelines.

The election observers are based in Pretoria but will travel to all nine provinces. Malanji was asked if his election observation mission was not too little and too late to get a real picture of the election.

He said the official observers had been receiving inputs from many other informal observers since before they arrived in Africa. And SEOM would also focus its efforts on observing the elections in difficult areas.

SEOM would issue a preliminary statement scheduled for May 10 about its observation of the elections. Tax said SEOM would leave South Africa on May 16 and issue its final report about a month after the elections. DM