I suspect that many white South Africans shared my view in the 90s that excessive pursuit of prosecutions for apartheid crimes would harm "reconciliation".

I now believe that I was wrong.

Proper completion of the TRC mission could have allowed a deeper healing. The discomfort of facing up to more of what was done in supposed defence of "law and order" would have been a small price to pay for a fairer reckoning for the past.

There may have been concerns for "stability" during the late 90s, but the 1999 election sealed our transition.

#ElectoralAmendmentBill

The core fault is having individuals on the same PR ballot as parties.

@IECSouthAfrica partly recognised this in June, when they (correctly) said that #Proportionality requires separate PR and #Constituency ballots.

But, they fail to follow their own / reasoning in respect of Provincial Legislatures.

They propose a PR ballot for the #NationalAssembly, and sub-national regional ballots, which allow #IndependentCandidates to stand.

But with no way to do the same for prov legislatures, they just IGNORE the constitutional fault.

I make a number of observations concerning the presentation of the @IECSouthAfrica's Mr Mamabolo.

The IEC did graciously afford the opportunity to make these points during July.

My aim is solely to uphold electoral integrity, and as such I support the work that the IEC does. /

https://twitter.com/atkinsmike1/status/1574667797497774081

Where I make critical comments, I do so as an objective analysis of what is being said.

I have no interest in personal criticism, but I have to call this as I see it.

It is true that I am "defending" my own submissions. I am entirely willing to be contradicted on the merits.

#ElectoralAmendmentBill

The Minister is now discussing responses by Senior Counsel on behalf of the Department.

He stresses their observation that submissions ARE being taken into account. The Minister discusses the introduction of the extra ballot for the #NationalAssembly, using the original content-less justification for the extra ballot.

He ignores the #Proportionality implications raised by @IECSouthAfrica in their second submission.

#ElectoralAmendmentBill

Sy Mamabolo of @IECSouthAfrica addresses the core issue of #Proportionality.

He makes the FALSE and MISLEADING point that, as perfect proportionality is not achievable, the degree of disproportionality in the Bill is acceptable. He discusses three elements of #Proportionality:

- threshhold
- district size
- electoral formula

He says that most submissions have concentrated ONLY on the formula.

(he does not yet say how these concerns are not valid)

#LGE2021 #NewResults

@IECSouthAfrica quietly published NEW result data over the course of yesterday and today.

EC, FS, Gauteng, Lim, N Cape and NW were published on Nov 8, while KZN, MP and W Cape were published on Nov 9.

To my knowledge, no public announcement has been made. It would be very helpful if @IECSouthAfrica was to publish a full list of the Voting Station result changes since the announcement of the results on Nov 4, along with details of any seat allocation changes.

#LGE2021 #ResultCheck

@IECSouthAfrica quietly published NEW result data TODAY, four days after the official results were announced publicly.

Different vote totals, and a different seat allocation for @Our_DA are indicated in the new data. To clarify, I show the seat calculation for #Ethekwini, which has altered.

There has been NO ANNOUNCEMENT on the @IECSouthAfrica Twitter account.

It will be an interesting exercise to determine what changes have been made, and under what circumstances.

We need TRANSPARENCY.

#LGE2021 #ResultCheck

There is an odd situation in two nearby voting stations in Moorton, Chatsworth in Ethekwini.

Moorton Community Hall and Dawnridge Primary both have 0 Ward spoilt ballots, but many PR spoilt. The issue is that there are matching Ballots Cast discrepancies, meaning that effectively 137 and 61 extra PR ballots respectively were cast in each place, AND that these were all spoiled.

It is difficult to say what transpired here, but this is the type of situation that ought to be investigated.

@IECSouthAfrica

#LGE2021

I am seeing hundreds of instances where parties have ZEROS written in for one or both of their vote tallies, often with smaller parties.

@IECSouthAfrica, although your reliance on the s 65 rule is misplaced, as errors cannot be rejected in isolation, or before the / result is known, the sheer scale of this shows that there is a SYSTEMIC problem with the quality and / or honesty of your staff in voting stations, AND with your #Audit processes.

When you tolerate these, you are not merely taking some votes away from smaller parties, you are /

I have given Christians a hard time over the fact that many have believed covid vaccine conspiracies. Maybe time for some balance.

The media, and much public discourse, IS generally slanted against ordinary Christian belief (objectively, this could be a good, or a bad thing). / In my view, much results from the mistrust of "mainstream media". In part (I choose my words carefully), some of that mistrust is well founded.

Christians tend to feel alienated (some will say that they should), and anyone who comes along, and "identifies" with that alienation /

Having been retrenched, I am looking for freelance / contract work in the following areas:

- data preparation
- database development
- web development
- communications

I am a determined, versatile, creative problem-solver.

Small or large jobs.

RTs appreciated. Pls DM DATA PREPARATION

I take data from the format you have to the format you need.

I have extensive experience in extracting and processing data from a wide variety of sources and formats.

Documents, tabular data, text, PDFs – no challenge refused.

My mother passed away last week (cancer, not covid). Vera Lilian Atkins (nee Hough) was born in the village of St Helens near Widnes, outside Liverpool in 1937. She grew up during the war, and post-war austerity. She was honest, courageous and hard-working. She left school at 15 to go out to work. Later she studied nursing, and then worked at a school for the deaf, where she met my father. She was something of a rebel growing up, but resisted against petty authority and arbitrary rules, rather than common decency.

I have been saying all along that the #ANC #Expropriation policy will be mild. This looks VERY open-ended, and I am convinced that it creates conflicts with other provisions of the Constitution.
news24.com/SouthAfrica/Ne… via @News24 @News24 The proposed text includes, "Provided that a court may determine that no compensation is payable in the event of expropriation of land for the purposes of land reform…". This is fatally flawed - one cannot have a guaranteed wrong EFFECT merely because the MOTIVE might seem good.