Drive to register prisoners taken to Kgosi Mampuru

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Deputy Minister of Correctional Services Patekile Holomisa says it is important that prisoners’ rights to vote be upheld.

Holomisa was speaking at the Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Services facility in Pretoria during the voter registration of prisoners.

The drive to register inmates, a collaboration between the Departments of Correctional Services and the Electoral Commission, entered its second day today and will end on Thursday with the aim of covering all of the country’s 200 prisons.

Holomisa says the Constitution of South Africa guarantees the political rights of prisoners and these are also protected under international law.

“We are a member of the United Nations organisation and one of its declarations is what is called the Nelson Mandela rules that dictate that prisoners must be treated with dignity. But they are also encouraging signatories to those rules to allow people to vote, the truth of the matter is that the great majority of nations do not give this right, a few in the world are giving this right to prisoners.”

Meanwhile, the IEC has shared its plans regarding the weekend voter registration: