The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) reports that 445 089 citizens who registered for the first time were people between the ages of 16 and 29.
Sy Mamabolo, CEO of the IEC, said the large number of young people registering showed that the IEC’s electoral efforts to attract young people were working.
This crucial age demographic comprised 78.31% of newly-registered voters, Mamabolo said.
‘Therefore, the commission’s continued focus on young persons is producing a good yield. The commission will persist with efforts to improve the registration levels of the youth’, Mamabolo said.
The total number of people who visited voting stations over the weekend stood at around 2.9 million, Mamabolo said at a media briefing yesterday.
Online registrations through the IEC online portal were 196 511.
There were 568 374 citizens who registered for the first time, while 1.4-million voters re-registered in the same voting district and 929 564 re-registered in a different voting district.
The commission held a two-day registration programme at the weekend, the first ahead of the 2024 national and provincial elections.
The demographic breakdown shows that women made up the majority of those who registered. About 52.5%, 298,500, of those who registered were women. Mamabolo said this statistic showed a continuing trend of more women participating in the voting process.
Gauteng saw the highest percentage of registrations, followed by KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape.
Mamabolo said there would be a second registration weekend next year ahead of the elections, but people were urged to use the online registration portal.
The voters’ roll now has 26.8 million voters, an increase from 26.3 million before the registration weekend.
There are still about 14 million eligible voters that still need to be registered.