Vote to make our towns and cities better for all citizens Municipal Elections: Vote Wisely

The Denis Hurley Centre, supported by like-minded NGOs and faith-based organisations across the country, is putting issues of homelessness into the spotlight ahead of the South African municipal elections to be held on 1 November this year.

The DHC is the lead in eThekwini of a series of initiatives to campaign for the implementation of a National Homeless Manifesto. In each city, political parties and individual candidates will be challenged to ensure that the needs of the homeless are firmly on the political agenda in the run up to the Municipal elections. Are they willing to endorse policies that would make towns and cities better for all citizens?

These campaign initiatives are part of a countrywide project of the National Homeless Network which comprises more than 40 organisations from 15 towns and cities across the country.

'We want to encourage voters to think about the issues that affect life in eThekwini for the new Municipality to be able to prioritise.' explains Raymond Perrier: Director of the DHC. 'We hope that ordinary voters will take note of which parties and which candidates endorse the National Homeless Manifesto for each city and thus consider this when they are deciding how to cast their vote.' adds Perrier.

'We want to ensure that issues that affect the poorest citizens of Durban are not neglected. The campaign argues that there are simple, far-reaching policies which are neither costly nor difficult to achieve, which can be implemented by the incoming eThekwini Municipal Government that would benefit homeless people and at the same time also benefit the wider voting citizens.' he says.

The National Homeless Network has drafted a Homeless Manifesto for these municipal elections. The areas of focus are Shelter, Health, Sanitation, Safety and Work. The demands are moderate and specific to each of our main cities, and they have been generated in part after consultation with the homeless community themselves.

Part of this campaign is to support the homeless community in being able to register and vote. The Denis Hurley Centre will be hosting the IEC for voter registration this weekend (18/19 September) with a particular focus on homeless voters.

The vast majority of homeless people are South African citizens so are therefore entitled to register to vote in South African elections. But the majority are not currently registered because of the assumed need for an address. The IEC has established that they can enable homeless people to register through a legitimate interpretation of the address requirement.

Working with some members of the National Homeless Network in the run-up to the 2019 National and Provincial elections, the IEC succeeded in registering, for the first time, hundreds of homeless South African citizens who had never previously voted.

'As a National Network, and through our members on the ground in most cities across South Africa, we declare our willingness to work with IEC officials to ensure that the commitment to free and fair elections in 2021 should also include homeless citizens of South Africa.' concludes Perrier.

The DHC - a familiar institution to members of the homeless community - is an IEC station both for registration and for voting.