Pieter Dirk Uys, the performer, writer, and satirist, thinks that many young South Africans living in the UK are backward and racist.

In an article carried in the London based weekly, The South African, to celebrate Heritage Day, Uys wrote, "My South Africa is not the United Kingdom, because happily many of our racist youth have left our rainbow shores to create their own a De la Rey-style Blankostan Homeland in the London suburb of Richmond."

It may have been that Uys was taking poetic license with an easy appeal to lazy stereotypes about South Africans who live abroad. Yes, there are those who left because they are gatvol with South African politics, and there are those who fled crime. But there are also those who just want to travel, gain work experience and make some hard currency before returning. And there are those who are driven by the prospects of a global career.

All of these, including those who say they'd prefer to forget South Africa entirely, are prone to bouts of nostalgia and longing for home.

To think that all South African expats in the UK are exclusively white is of course demented. Yes they are predominantly white, but PD Uys should attend the annual South African Chamber of Commerce cocktail party in London or some other function and he might meet black South African bankers or lawyers. If hospitalized he would very probably come across a black South African nurse.

And its hardly the case that they are a group of right wingers waving the old South African flag. Only a handful turned up last week at the Red October protest outside the South African High Commission in London. Far more turn up at rugby matches or in pubs waving the South African flag.

Guess what everyone is a patriot of some sort or other, which is why South Africans abroad turned out to vote in large numbers in the general election of 2009. They took time off work and stood in queues for hours. They voted because they cared.

Many have strong emotional ties and many feel they will return.

In 2009 the Constitutional Court declared the Electoral Act unconstitutional. That's why South Africans were allowed to cast ballots in that year's election -- but only at the country's high commissions and embassies.

Earlier this year Democratic Alliance MP James Selfe introduced a private member's bill to expand these rights. If the bill had passed, it would have permitted South Africans living abroad to register abroad, and to vote on the provincial as well as national ballots. Selfe's bill also made provision for additional voting stations.

Restricting the right to vote to the national ballot only creates a democratic deficit. If those outside can only vote on the national ballot, it becomes impossible for votes to be allocated to parties that would go to their share of the "regional seats" in the National Assembly. The result is that those living outside the country have a reduced national vote because they cannot vote on the provincial ballot.

Government proposed amendments to the Electoral Act only to allow registration abroad and not permit a provincial ballot or voting at locations other than embassies. In response, the DA and nine other applicants last month filed papers in the Western Cape High Court to rectify the shortfalls in the right to vote.

Many South Africans who wish to vote are far from an embassy, but yet might be close to a consulate. There is a strong case that South African consulates and trade missions should be used to help support the country's voting.

The right to register abroad would seem a logical extension to the established right to vote abroad.

While the cost to the Electoral Commission of South Africa, IEC, to further extend voting rights might be substantial, this does not enter into the legal argument. The IEC is in the business of demarcation, registration, setting up voting stations, and counting the vote, and doing so overseas would not seem an overly large burden.

Due to its apparent susceptibility to abuse, neither the IEC nor the DA, want postal voting to be used in an overseas voting. However, UK and US citizens living overseas use postal ballots to vote. In the case of the US one can register by mail, and then the voter's home state will mail them a ballot sheet which must be post marked before election day. Some US states do allow voters to fax back or scan and email the ballot sheet. UK voters living overseas can vote by proxy, allowing someone in the UK to vote on their behalf, or by proxy.

While SA's voting legislation will have to be changed, the cost of overseas voting could be substantially reduced in the future with the adoption of a form of electronic voting. E-voting is in its infancy, but like much in the digital age is unlikely to remain so for long. 

Remote E-voting over the internet, rather than in election stations, may be the least costly solution for overseas voters. This is not an immediate prospect, and is likely to be at least five if not more years away. However, the IEC could perhaps start by running a pilot project to experiment on overseas voters. The point is that the cost of next year's vote overseas need not be a pointer to future costs of serving South Africans living overseas.

The case before the Western Cape High Court is not contingent on Uys or the views of others on South Africans abroad, but those who take up the right will by self-selection not be the ones who live in Uys' imagined Blankostan.

Jonathan Katzenellenbogen

London

This article was published with the assistance of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF). The views presented in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FNF.

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