By Bida Elly David
South African gov’t pledged its readiness to support the transitional government (R-TGoNU) in its attempts to conduct December 2024 democratic elections.
The pledge followed a meeting between President Salva Kiir and South African deputy president, Paul Mashatile, on Wednesday at the State House.
Deng Dau Deng, the acting minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, said South Africa has pledged technical support and expertise to the National Election Commission.
“South Africa has promised to help South Sudan in capacity building. The electoral commission needs institutional and normal capacity building,” he told No. 1 Citizen Daily Newspaper, yesterday.
Dau said the South African government has requested the South Sudan election body to present major areas of assistance for the conduct of free and fair elections.
He noted that one of the areas in which South Sudan needs help is the management of the elections, stating that their partners have demonstrated readiness to render their assistance.
“When it comes to that, we may need to get observers for the elections and kind and technical support outlined by the pillars, which are the reconstitution of election laws, political party laws, and others,” Dau underscored.
“The issue of the census, civic education, and registration of voters are additional pillars that the South African government should help the South Sudan election commission with,” he continued.
He underlined that the question of demarcating constituencies was one of the areas that needed to be addressed by their partner.
“Arrangement of polling stations is another thing. We thought election activities were a small thing. It is a very huge undertaking, and that is why they gave that particular promise to help,” the minister added.
Dau hinted that South Africa, being one of the concerned countries on the African continent, drew attention to helping South Sudan transition to democracy.
“South Africa was one of the countries to broker inter-party talks with the SPLM in 2015 up to 2016. They have invested a lot in building the SPLM together as a party for us to be able to unite,” he cited.
The visiting South African Deputy President has been conducting series of meetings with various leaders and institutions in Juba to assess the progress of the peace deal.
During his meeting with the South African VP, Kiir reaffirmed the government’s keenness to implement the provisions of the agreement in order to take the country on a trajectory of peace and democratic elections at the end of the transitional period.