SANDU urges soldiers to vote

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The South African National Defence Union (SANDU) has called on its members to participate in the elections in their numbers.

This comes as South Africans are voting in the seventh democratic national and provincial elections this week.

Special votes started on Monday and will proceed today, while election day is tomorrow. 

SANDU’s national organiser, Mohapi Mohapi, says that soldiers need to cast their votes for the elected government to recognise them and change what he terms awful working conditions, including a lack of resources and low salaries.

“Those guys in the DRC, like I said, not only in the DRC, I’m mentioning DRC because our soldiers are dying there. Those guys at the DRC, they don’t have tents to sleep on. Water pours into the tents that they have there when it’s raining. We are expecting that the government of the day, the one that is coming (the incoming government) must take care of those kinds of things. When we talk about soldiers of South Africa, we make sure that they are going to take care of them.”

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-Report by Thabang Morutloa