The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has begun registering - throughout the country's 280 prisons - prisoners eligible to vote in the forthcoming general elections. This follows the Constitutional Court ruling last week that all prisoners, including those serving sentences without an option of a fine, be allowed to vote in the April 14 elections. The ruling came after the South African Institute for Crime Prevention and Reintegration of Offenders (Nicro) and two prisoners serving sentences without an option of a fine brought an application before the court contesting amendments to the Electoral Act. There are currently about 182 000 prisoners, whom the electoral body says, will be afforded the opportunity to register for the polls. So far, the IEC has managed to put about 9 930 inmates on the national voters' roll, through targeted registration campaigns in prisons. To qualify for registration, a prisoner will have to be a South African citizen, 18 years and older and must have in his or her possession a green bar coded identity document.

Those with a valid temporary identity certificate issued by the Home Affairs Department will also be registered.

IEC spokesperson Lydia Young today confirmed that the prisoners would not be accorded special votes, but would vote on the set election day.

Electoral authorities, she added, would dispatch mobile voting stations on the day to jails during specific times to allow inmates to put their crosses on the preferred political parties. About 20,6-million South Africans have indicated their intention to vote in the country's third democratic polls that will culminate in the inauguration of the new president on Freedom Day (27 April) in Pretoria. The swearing in of the new president will also coincide with the official handing over of the Freedom Park memorial site at Salvokop, Pretoria, as part of the celebrations marking the country's ten years of democracy.

Meanwhile, the IEC is due to file an affidavit with the Registrar of the Court and other interested parties today, setting out the manner in which it will comply with the Constitutional Court ruling. – BuaNews.