ROAD TO 2024 ELECTIONS
Signature fraud claims against Zuma’s MK party may imperil poll legitimacy
Former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto Wesizwe party is unlikely to be affected at the polls by its expulsion of high-ranking members. However, allegations that it forged supporters’ signatures could threaten the legitimacy of the elections.
With the national and provincial elections only 30 days away, fresh controversy has erupted around one of South Africa’s newest and most headline-grabbing parties, former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto Wesizwe party (MK).
On Friday, 26 April, the party announced it had expelled five of its members, including Jabulani Khumalo, who registered the party with the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) last year and was considered the party leader until Zuma threw his hat in the ring as the fledgling party’s presidential hopeful.
The party said that a National Core Leadership meeting revealed that the MK party had been infiltrated by external forces who sought to destabilise it. As such, Khumalo was expelled alongside treasurer-general Rochelle Davidson, Ray Khumalo, Bheki Manzini and Lebo Moepeng.
Three of the expelled members were high on the party’s election candidate list, with Jabulani Khumalo appearing second, Moepeng fourth and Davidson eighth.
Former president Jacob Zuma addresses uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party supporters in Durban on 27 March 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / Darren Stewart)
The MK party did not reveal exactly what motivated the purge, but claimed it was in the name of “patriotic South Africans that want to see change”.
“We urge all MK members to be disciplined and trust the leadership as we work towards gaining support for a campaign that will emancipate the downtrodden people of our country,” the party said.
The Sunday Times quoted a source who said Jabulani Khumalo had been raising funds for the party, but those funds never reached its coffers.
Party spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndlela told the newspaper that Khumalo had recently acquired new cars and had gone from having one bodyguard to four. Sunday Times said Khumalo did not answer calls or respond to questions. Daily Maverick was unable to reach him at the time of writing.
Earlier in April, the party announced the “strategic redeployment” of its youth league leaders, including the league’s outspoken national coordinator Bonginkosi Khanyile, his deputy, Thapelo Maisha, interim secretary-general Gaan Cibane and Gauteng coordinator Philani Gazuzu Nduli.
Signature ‘fraud’
On Sunday, City Press reported on allegations that the MK party had forged thousands of signatures to register for the elections.
According to the publication, a former senior MK party official, Lennox Ntsodo, filed an affidavit with the Western Cape police claiming that the MK party embarked on a widespread campaign to forge signatures to meet the IEC’s 15,000 threshold to appear on the election ballot.
City Press reported that Ntsodo claimed that he recruited about 20 people to help in a mass drive to forge signatures after the IEC rejected the party’s initial application for registration in 2023 over concerns that signatures were fraudulent.
Ntsodo requested not to be prosecuted for his admission in line with section 204 of the Criminal Procedure Act and has asked that he and his family be placed in witness protection.
City Press reported that MK took ID numbers, names and cellphone numbers from a City of Cape Town jobseekers’ database and forged the corresponding signatures before submitting them to the IEC. The publication called 15 people on the MK party’s supporter list; 14 denied they had signed the list.
Signs of trouble for MK?
The purge of party members and the signature forgery scandal came as the MK party’s support has been growing, with the latest Ipsos poll showing that if an election were to be held tomorrow the party would garner 8.4% of the national vote, shooting up to fourth position and beating all other newly established parties.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Zuma’s MK party and unhappy voters whack ANC to 40.2% in latest Ipsos poll
Questions have arisen about whether the controversies will dent the party’s growing support.
Political analyst and Rivonia Circle director Tessa Dooms said the purge was unlikely to adversely affect the MK party’s prospects at the polls. Dooms said the MK party reminded her of the Congress of the People (Cope) when it was first presented as an alternative to the ruling party in 2008.
Dooms said that similar to Cope, the MK party was one of the big bona fide breakaways from the ANC.
“It’s eerily similar to the Cope moment in that Cope also had the leadership faction earlier on before they even went to the elections. To this day, Cope had the biggest showing in the first election for a newcoming party after 1994, with over 1.3 million votes and 30 seats in Parliament…
“Even with those factional battles, they still did something extraordinary in terms of their [showing]. I don’t think we should link what happened within the MK party and structures to the sentiment that might drive voters out. I think people who are voting for the MK party aren’t members; they are largely doing it because it’s a protest vote against the ANC,” Dooms said.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Elections 2024
In a press conference earlier in April, the IEC admitted that it only checked whether the ID numbers on the party supporter lists matched those of registered voters, while it did not have the capacity to verify the authenticity of signatures.
Grave implications
If the allegations against the MK party are proven correct, they could have grave implications for the legitimacy of the elections, potentially bringing the elections into disrepute.
The IEC has remained mum on the issue, stating only that it would refer it to Parliament to determine whether the signatures had been obtained fraudulently.
This is not the first time that the legitimacy of supporters’ signatures has been questioned. Last week, Economic Freedom Fighter (EFF) leader Julius Malema questioned the authenticity of the signatures submitted by Mmusi Maimane’s Build One South Africa.
The EFF said it had approached the IEC about the issue.
Dooms said she was interested to see whether the IEC had responded to the Red Berets’ request to close the loopholes regarding unverified signatures. She called on the commission to be proactive in responding to the likelihood of fraudulent signature submissions.
In the instance that the allegations are true, Dooms said, “The answer that the election is too soon to do anything about it is jeopardising the credibility of the election. That the election is free, fair and credible is more important than that the election is soon.”
Dooms added that according to the Constitution, the election could be held as late as mid-August and that the IEC could look at postponing the vote to deal with the issues.
“I really think it is important for us that it has to be credible because we don’t want a situation where after the election, there are questions raised about it. I think the IEC must respond to this question about why the idea of postponing the election or why [the electoral timetable] is used as a reason that we don’t have time when in reality we do have time,” Dooms said.
Daily Maverick asked the IEC for comment on the allegations of signature forgery levelled at the MK party, but the commission had yet to respond at the time of publication. DM
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More time will only result in more forged signatures.
The people in MK learnt well from former prisoner zuma : they will behave in MK the way he behaved in government : steal anything you haven’t broken yet.
I guess no maverick is surprised by the MK forgery it may be the only way they know how to do things.
I wonder if it’s only them. I recently got a call from a political party other than MK who clearly knew my full names, my ID number, my address. They said they were checking their voter’s roll and would I care to confirm the details they had.
I told them there was only one voter’s roll and it wasn’t theirs, they should stop thinking that voters are so stupid, I was not going to play along with whatever their game was, and good day to you.
Now that party has all my details already. They can add them to a form and then just make a scribble next to my name.
Wasn’t MK initially refused registration by the IEC because of this very concern?! Oh was it a nightmare I had…
IEC will not make the decision but leave it to parliament, a joke, of course the IDs were obtained illegally and no one can say they would be happy with a political party using their IDs for their own gain.
Well of course a bunch of illegally elected parliamentarians will be unbiased when legitimise an illegitimate election. Anyone agree?
MK doing something illegal? Surely not? Surely this party led by the prince of honesty and transparency, the one, the only, “I gave Kwesi post shower taxi money and then allowed the Guptas to rape this country” Jacob Mshini Wam would not be involved in something as pathetic as signature forging?
Lets leave aside for now the signatures and all the legalities and illegalities associated with anything Zuma touches. If a party is on the ballot and subsequently garners substantial voter support during the election, than that is the will of the electorate. The will of the electorate is the foundation of Democracy. So it cannot then be said, that those votes render the ballot illegitimate.
“The will of the electorate is the foundation of Democracy.” That may well be true, but the rule of law is the foundation of a functional, modern and prosperous society – if you flout that fundamental, where do you end up? ‘The will of the electorate’ to lynch suspected gangsters? ‘The will of the electorate’ to unleash xenophobic attacks on foreigners, legal, illegal, refugees or perhaps not actually foreigners at all? Maybe to demand kickbacks from mining or construction companies for having the temerity to launch projects on ‘their’ land? I’m sorry, but you cannot leave aside the issue of ‘legalities’ as if they’re somehow just a technicality: they’re the absolute foundation for being able to contest the elections, and if a party can’t muster those signatures legally, they have no place on the ballot paper to start with. Using the ‘will of the electorate’ under these circumstances is pure sophistry to appease criminality and fraud. Now, let’s think: which new party has a leader who is routinely linked with fraud, corruption and criminality?
Hi Dan, I do agree with your premise that the rule of law is ” a ” foundation but not “the” of modern society, there are others. Excluding a sizeable segment of the population has its own perils. As far as Zuma is concerned he should languish in jail.
Hi Dov, if a politician believes that she/he has a sizeable constituency, then abide by the rule of law and register properly and on time – it shouldn’t be for the law to make exceptions, based on (unreliable) polls or rent a crowd photo-ops: it should be for our politicians to do the simplest thing they’re asked to properly, and without aspersions being cast as to how they got their signatures. If they’ve failed in that simplest of tasks, then they’ve failed their constituents, not anybody else, and certainly not the rule of law.
I’ve got to say, your logic is as improbable as your username.
Given these mental gymnastics – and your incredible capacity for stretching and reaching – it’s hard not to picture you in a leopard-print leotard – but that is beside the point.
The ‘Will of the Electorate’, expressed extra politically (read: illegally), is the will of the mob. And that’s what ultimately gave us concentration camps and the Holocaust.
Again, with a username like yours, I’d expect you to be acutely aware of this.
All correct except that the law in this instance is defective.
Your name and ID number, with fake signature, could be in those forms endorsing a Party/candidate you don’t know.
Parliament gave IEC a defective legislation.
I thought of that too. It doesn’t matter. Except should there be a threshold to get your party’s name on the ballot paper so that somebody can make a cross against it? People can’t vote for you if your name isn’t on the paper in the first place.
Also this mechanism seems to me to be about weeding out new parties that are created expressly with the aim of splitting the opposition or at least the support of a particular party (or the votes of those who are opposed to some party).
The down side is that it means we can’t liven up our elections with an equivalent of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Though a Party For Those Who Distrust Political Parties might get a surprising number of signatures, but maybe not so many votes.
Magashule’s party was barred from taking part because their paperwork was late. Those are the rules. In the last election, the same thing happened to the NFP in KZN even though they seemed to have some reasonable support.
But zumas party got around this problem by cheating and committing fraud. Just get your hands on some database with random peoples personal details and then add signatures. I couldn’t give a hoot about the will of the people if the conduct of their leadership is prepared to behave like this even before they get to parliament.
So bottom line is, if the signatures are forged then their paperwork is not valid and they must be expelled from taking part. Or else let Magashules party contest. Can’t have it both ways.
100%
Magashule’s Party, ACT, is in the ballot.
I’m sure the signature situation is quite widespread. I had seen a post with photos indicating that the Referendum Party’s signature form accepted impossible ID numbers, as well as what was probably the entire script of Bee Movie (2007) in the Full Name and Surname fields.
“Submitted, thanks! Please share this link with your friends and family.”
If this claim is proven MKP should be barred from taking part in the election. That won’t happen though because there would be serious rioting.
What a mess! The Nkandla wrecking ball swings unhindered. Many have called him “stupid” and highlighted his Grade 3 education. Yet, here he is, giving the entire country, judiciary, IEC, ANC, ConCourt, DCS, the run-around and a middle finger to boot.
Unbelievably, he is still being under-estimated, as is his ability for scorched earth. The wrecking ball swings and swings. Not too shabby for someone who in the estimation of DCS was knocking at death’s door.
It raises the question of what exactly he did while in Russia? Fund-raising?
And once the law of entropy does eventually get him… there’s the red beret mini-me waiting in the wings. God help us.
Falsifying another person’s signature, even in good faith, is considered an offense of falsifying documents and can lead to serious consequences, including imprisonment. The sentence can range from six months to six years in prison, depending on whether the falsified document is public or private
I will tell a story to make a point. Back in the 90s international motor rallying was based on the notion that the cars used for competition were modified production cars, with “production” being determined by number made.
But some cars being raced had turbochargers that conferred huge power but which would make the car a very difficult proposition in regular traffic when driven by a person with average skills.
But how could the authorities establish the truth? Well… they consulted some statisticians who told them that all they had to do to get a reliable picture of what the “production” car’s specification was was to track down a 100 or so via records kept by the manufacturers and dealers. Then ask the owner very nicely if you could take a peek under the bonnet. A pattern would soon reveal itself. Either the production car was a fire breathing monster or the teams were telling a porky.
So they announced they were going to do this. The very announcement was enough to flush out some chance takers.
And this is what the IEC should do. Get a list from whatever party. Phone a few of the signatories and ask them if they had endorsed a party with their signature and if so, which party. Again, a pattern will emerge. Then go back to whichever party and say “of the 30 people on your list we called, 27 said they had not endorsed you. Would you care to check your list and resubmit?”
Statistical theory, properly applied by professional statisticians to a genuinely random sample of 30 signatures for thorough, formal verification, will produce a 99% reliable outcome. I don’t remember if the see-sawing number is about 3 (2 to 4) false returns out of 30 tested, at which double-sized sample has to be drawn and tested, but small-sampling is actually a very straightforward and proven way to confirm with 99.9% confidence whether the evidence is true or fabricated.
No one could argue against the findings of testing a sample of only 150 of the required 15 000 signatures.
But our skelm-in-chief would of course say those few forgers were identified and already expelled from the pure-as-the-flaming-firepool party.
You don’t seem know a great deal about sampling theory and the accuracy of the result.
I would appreciate reading your correct explanation of statistical quality control. Seriously. My off the cuff recall is admittedly v. rusty.
With normal (bell-shaped) distribution, a sample size of 300 of a population greater than 1000 will provide a 95% confidence interval.
For off the cuff / napkin mathematics, 30/100 will provide a reasonable indication if further investigation is warranted.
1. Every person who’s id was stolen and who signature have been forged MUST prosecute the offenders … to save South Africa!
2. Every honest political party must do the same!
3. And also every NGO, church, cultural organisation
… to SAVE SOUTH AFRICA!
4. The forger offenders and their fellow conspirators MUST be arrested and kept in jail untill the election is over.
5. The MK political party must be suspended from participation in the 2024 election.
Feeble authorities that handle this offence with ‘limp wrists’ will thrust SA into unpresidented unrest and violence!
We were emphatically told by our local station commander that if we wanted more resources, we must report more incidents. This year we got 4 new recruits – 4! – I’d love to see some stats on how many bronze we are training and producing annually, in all the various facilities across Home.
As vexing as it is to phone ten-triple-one, if you don’t log the incident, it may as well have never happened. It’s a numbers game, folks. Pour yourself a cuppa.
On a side note, I do appreciate the accidental typo, “unpresidented”.
Or was it?
… ha … ha …
must it be ‘presedented’?
English is my 3rd language of 6 … probably your only …?
For the language aficionados: unprecedented.
Thanks!
There’s a c in there somewhere.
Beside the seriousness of the issue, there sound as if opponents are on a rampage to sabotage the MK from taking part in the next upcoming elections and with the latest stories of infiltration within the party, people would go as far as using former MK members to delegitimize the party. Just two weeks ago Malema raised concerns regarding the IEC giving the MK party too much publicity which to me sounded like jealousy as the MK party achieved some real progress in the past couple of weeks. Last week Malema also came to complain about BOSA signatures which saw the MK signatures being questioned over the weekend. A coincidence? I don’t think so. Now the big question could be, is this the bitter Malema(part2) who will stab Zuma on the back same as he did with others to remove him from his presidency seat? Hopefully we will come to see the truth out of this signature issue and reveal the Judas for who they really are.
🥱
[Fatboy Slim starts playing …]
Right about now, the funk soil brother
Check it out now, the funk soil brother
Fraud is fraud, you cannot copy, use anyone’s identity. Whoever whatever no matter it is against POPI, Protection of personal information. Andre Swart we all , as ethical people have to agree…. if this happens in private business we would be closed down, jailed and more.
Sounds like this guy is the writer on the SA political Soapie: “Thieves of our lives”. I’d like to say he is being melodramatic, but the politicians actually behave like this.
We are drowning in corruption and irregular spending. It seems to have no end.
We have a dwindling tax base, that needs to fund every cent, spent by the government.
The government appears to have little respect for the taxes they receive.
Their abuse of taxpayers contributions is arrogant, and seemingly unstoppable.
They have no shame.
I am calling on OUTA to publicly instruct the tax payer on the mechanisms and implications of a tax boycott. I have always paid my tax, but I am now seriously considering alternative options.
Advice would be welcome.
It’s not just a case of forged signatures … it’s IDENTITY THEFT because the identity numbers, names etc. were also ‘stolen’.
In South Africa, identity theft is punishable by fines of up to R10 million and a jail sentence of up to 10 years, depending on the severity of the breach.
Not surprised about the fraud, and I would be equally surprised if anythig will be done about it.
Hilarious. Being expelled for being a destabiliser by the Great Destabiliser. And forged signatures to establish the Looter Party. What could be more apt.
Well I think it will work best if IEC uses biometric system to verify membership eligibility as it is quick and accurate. I agree that elections may be delayed for at least two months in order to deal with those backlogs.
Two months?? Will need over 12 months to set up biometric voters rolls.
Can we have a non-ANC government overseen by the CC, during the hiatus?
I was once a member of ANC and stop being a member in 2007. But an ANC activist in my area told me that I am still a member of ANC in good standing…
The issue of signatures is a thorn that may be not be proven or disproved because any party that is formed from the ANC can be infiltrated easily to distract it’s smooth functioning. Biometric system can be authenticated
Does anybody REALLY believe that ANY politica, party got 15,000+ live and kicking individuals to sign the neccessary document for the IEC, and that the IEC actually checked that each and every signature was checked with the signatory by the IEC?
Well I for one dont’t live in Disneyland. Of course there are a huge number of forged signatures.
Which dummo put together this requirement in the hopeless belief that there would be no cheating? Or that there was no corresponding absolute requirement that every last signature had to checked for legitimacy in order to prevent cheating? That checking is an impossible task. It’s utter idiocity.
Sample, dear boy.
And disqualify if over 1% of those carefully checked is faked.
My bet is that at the 1% level of faking no party would qualify. And how anyway do you check that a signature is legit? Is there a phone number of the signatory? Ie if you dont’t have a phone then you are barred from being a signatory? If the person who phones to check gets no reply is that a cheat or just that signatory could not answer the phone at the time? How do you actually do the checking, and how do you handle the volume and cost even if you sample only 10% of the signatories of the many parties?
10% (1500) is impractical, but 1% sample is feasible, and will give a result with a very high level of confidence.
We’re not looking at a binomial distribution here, but the same problem as sampling from a large number of manufactured components submitted by a supplier for acceptance. SQC tells you how small a random sample can be drawn, and if the agreed (low) count of defectives is exceeded, the entire batch represented by the sample is rejected.
But I do agree that the way IEC has set up this criterion is ridiculously impractical; knowing which, ALL start-up parties will take their chances and forge at least a few signatures.
Everything he touches……
Do all Parties not receive a copy of Voters Roll once registered? Or able to get one easily – even if out of date?
If so they have access to names and ID Numbers, and who is actually going to confirm the authenticity of the signatures (and how) in any event?
Being able to “register” a Political Party is way too easy, and potentially too “profitable” , which is exactly why we have such a ridiculous number of Political Parties.
Given our voting system and the low bar needed for the “founder”, as number 1 on the list” to become the recipient of a 5 year guaranteed high paying “job” (do not have to actually do anything for those big bucks) turns our electoral system into a joke
Spot on
Why is my comment, posted yesterday to explain his error to Bob Dubery, still awaiting moderation 18 hours later?
Parties already represented in parliament are NOT required to submit ANY number of supporting signatures at all. They also are supposed to have full access to the IEC’s lists of registered voters, and I’m sure all major, organised parties have been working the phones, calling registered voters to try (by showing interest) to secure their votes.
Reply
Surely the easiest thing to do is to crosscheck the City of Cape Town’s Job Seeker’s databse with the MK signature list. This would take very little time and would pretty much settle the matter if an inordinate number of ID numbers matched between the two data sets.
If you do this for one party and one list the. You must do so for all parties and all lists. Unless, of course, you are biased.
No. Investigating a fraud claim is not bias. Sure, if there are claims against all the parties, then investigate all the parties. But there is not a claim against all parties.
Election compromised!!
The 2024 election is compromised and must be postponed.
MK party officials STOLE innocent jobseekers’ personal information from a database without their permission or knowledge.
The stolen information included names, id’s, addresses etc. and it was illegally submitted as MK member signatures, to the IEC.
The innocent jobseekers weren’t aware of the crime that was commited with their names, signatures and personal information.
It’s not only a case where signatures were forged, … it’s much more serious.
It’s a case of IDENTITY THEFT and misreprentation of the individuals as members of the MK political party!
In South Africa, identity theft is punishable by fines of up to R10 million and a jail sentence of up to 10 years, depending on the severity of the breach.
Postpone the 29 May election because it’s compromised and won’t deliver fair results.
Postponement will provide time for the police to prosecute the identity thiefs FIRST and then proceed with the elections in August!