KZN police commissioner Mkhwanazi says law enforcement ready for elections

JOHANNESBURG - It is all systems go for law enforcement in KwaZulu-Natal ahead of Wednesday's polls.

While most South Africans will enjoy the day off, the country’s men and women in blue will be out in their numbers.

The province made its final deployments on Tuesday, with officers headed to the northern region receiving their marching orders at a parade held in Durban.

Despite the security concerns on the back of the July 2021 unrest and with more than 200 of the province’s voting stations having been identified as "high risk" there have been minimal incidents reported so far and Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi is hoping it stays that way.

"We also hope that those that are aggrieved by anything, including what is happening in the courts of our country; in the political landscape, the way things are happening, people that are not in support of those decisions that are being taken, they are going to act responsibly and not violate the law themselves in order to promote their rights."

KwaZulu-Natal is an expansive, largely rural province where just accessing some of the most far-flung communities can be a challenge but Mkhwanazi said they were prepared.

"We are very unique as a province. For instance, we’ve got voting stations that would require boats … but we have vessels for that. We have helicopters that allow us to reach places that might be difficult. Of course, the bigger part of our province is rural, so we have a lot of off-road four-by-four vehicles that we deploy to help us run these operations."

He also describes it as "a fluid situation" and said they were continuously reassessing their deployment strategy in line with the needs on the ground.