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No incidents of violence or intimidation have been reported in the volatile Vuwani area but very few residents have cast their votes.
Many people cited safety concerns as reasons for staying away.
Those in support of the elections boycott have started converging at the local football field in Vyeboom where a tournament is under way.
This is in a muted stay-away from elections in an area that has seen a wave of violent protests which left more than 20 schools torched and a lockdown that kept pupils away from school for three months.
Threats to not allow the IEC access to the area prompted the police to beef up their presence and more than 1000 officers were deployed to Vuwani from as far as the North West and Free State.
Last week, officers started clearing the streets from barricades to make way for IEC officials.
While they are known for their running battles with the police in the past, residents seem to have decided to give confrontation a miss and play football instead.
“The community spoke in one voice that they can’t vote under the new municipality. We just had to strongly condemn violence as well as intimidation and football matches were organised to keep people occupied,” said community leader Nsovo Sambo.
“We’re having a busy day here with all kind of players from grannies and old men to crèche kids. We don’t have a problem with anyone voting though.”
Meanwhile, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des van Rooyen said the government has had “not less than 43” meetings with key stakeholders in the affected Vuwani areas in a bid to restore calm there.
Communities have embarked on a protest since early May, demanding that the municipal demarcation board reverse its decision to have the Vuwani areas incorporated into a new municipality with Malamulele and Hlanganani. They would rather remain in Makhado municipality.
Traditional leaders last week signed an agreement with the government that said people would be allowed to vote and the shutdown would be lifted. But protesting communities said the traditional leaders were not representing them and that they would boycott the elections.
Van Rooyen said “constitutionally it is not necessarily wrong for people not to vote, but ideally with our new democracy those who are not going to vote will be denying themselves an opportunity to be part of a process of strengthening our democracy”.
He said there were 34 affected areas in Vuwani and “only eight of those wards are giving us a bit of a challenge”. He still believed “in all these other wards we will see a good turnout and continue to encourage our people to come out and do the right thing”.
This was not the case though, with very few people having voted by midday. A station in Ha-Matsila had counted 22 voters by noon.
While voting was slow, security agencies were not taking any chances. Police patrolled the streets and helicopters monitored the area from above.
The army was also on the ground, playing a logistical role by setting up tents at voting stations across the area.
City Press saw at least two voting stations where IEC staff set up outside schools’ locked gates.
Arrangements had been made for voting to be held inside one of the rooms of the school but people said it was intentional to lock electoral officers outside some venues by those supporting the call to stay away from voting.
