In its latest move, the Michael Keakopa- led group has publicised the voters roll digitally and has since started exposing what it deems as irregularities that could lead to them taking legal action. In September 2023, President Mokgweetsi Masisi, during the BDP national council and extra-ordinary congress in Palapye, noted that Madibela-Tlhopho are lawless characters who protect the vote with thuggery and anger but will get in line. This came following their clash with armed security during a by-election in the Serowe West constituency in July of the same year. “We will see these people and their characters. As you can see, they were training Madibela Tlhopho as if it is the first time a vote is protected. E dibelwa ka ntwa le bogale, boganana le boganka,” Masisi told the BDP members. He pointed out that Madibela-Tlhopho will get in line. He said if Madibela-Tlhopho are not trained, they will be trained stating that are not going to be threatened. Madibela-Tlhopho would, however, not budge and have since then not looked back, challenging and attacking the IEC and the BDP over various electoral issues.
The Court of Appeal in December ruled in favour of the IEC in a case which meant Madibela-Tlhopho would not be granted access to names and national identity card numbers of individuals registering to vote and record the serial numbers of the registration booklets for each and every registration day at the opening and closing thereof. The UDC had gotten in their favour a High Court order that ruled in their favour, where the IEC was interdicted and restrained from preventing the UDC from observing and monitoring the national elections registration process. The UDC had approached the court to seek permission to closely monitor and obsrve the voter registration exercise ahead of the 2024 General Election. At the heart of the UDC’s case is that they believe that transparency and fairness were of utmost importance and the presence of their representatives would help ensure a free and fair electoral process. The IEC, however, has been adamant that as the electoral body, they have been following due process and that by allowing Madibela-Tlhopho to monitor elections and ‘do as they please’, it would compromise the electoral processes. With just under a month before the polls, Madibela-Tlhopho are at it again with damning allegations against the IEC and the BDP government, claiming that there are multiple errors on the voters' roll as it was properly inspected.
According to Keakopa, they asked for a soft copy of the voters roll as they believed it would make it easy for holistic inspection but upon IEC declining, a whistleblower provided them with the roll. “The IEC are in a panic mode hence they refused to give us the soft copy roll while they provided it in 2019. It has now become obvious after observing the roll that there were issues they wanted to keep away from us. It is now up online and we call on everyone to inspect it despite them stating that the final day for inspection of the amalgamated roll is 09 October 2024,” he said. Keakopa said though rolls were put at Kgotlas and other public areas, as well as being sold, few people could do so hence they are only identifying many issues now. Thus far, he said they have since established that people’s names written in different formats would be found on the roll raising suspicions that they could vote multiple times. “As far as we are concerned, proper inspection just started. Other names are written wrongly, registration numbers are wrong and other people have been registered under wrong polling stations. We have been calling on people to go to the IEC offices and fix the errors where possible. We are shocked that they never announced the length of the amalgamated roll and when we start the inspection, they quickly announced that it is coming to an end. We, however, will continue inspecting the roll and decide on the next step,” he said.
Keakopa said they will continue their inspection after which they will submit a report to the UDC leadership, which would then release to the public with a possibility of instituting legal proceedings. He said in case someone appears twice on the voters roll, they can still take the matter to court on the basis that lawfully one can only vote once. “Alternatively, we plead with people to help us identify these people who were registered more than once and once we know them, we will stop them from voting twice. Also, we plead with our people to stay and protect their votes by staying at the polling stations after voting," he said. On the implications of their actions against the Data Protection Act, Keakopa said they have not broken any laws hence the IEC nor the police are arresting them for the publication of the roll and its contents. In a response to the publication of the roll, the IEC stated that it is inundated with inquiries regarding the purported soft copies of the rolls circulating in various media platforms.
“The Commission wishes to advise that at the moment, it is only able to provide stakeholders and any interested persons with hard copies of the rolls, either for formal inspection or personal use. This is mainly on account of issues of data protection and the need to ensure compliance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act, before such an eventuality. Under the circumstances, the Commission has never shared, sold or published soft copies of any rolls, including election rolls. Therefore, the Commission would not be accountable for any misinformation, disinformation, distortion of data or harm, which may arise from the publication of voters' personal details in the manner in which it has been done,” the IEC wrote in a statement.
