Rabia Mayet | rabiamayet@radioislam.co.za

02 November 2026

2-minute read

As South Africa prepares for the local government elections this week, technology is opening pathways for citizens to engage with democracy.

Dan Soutwood-Wells, computer scientist and part of the ElectionSePush team, says that their newly developed app, makes elections more accessible. It is based on the EskomSePush app which he co-founded when loadshedding was at its peak.

In addition to electricity, ElectionSePush now includes issues related to water and internet outages. The information is structured to keep track of incidents happening in different suburbs across South Africa.

Dan says that only a handful of citizens understand the process of elections, while the general population is clueless of the IEC process, the workings of multiple ballots, how to get involved and how to ensure that the entire process is above-board. Using the experience they had building EskomSePush, they developed ElectionSePush to “demystify the process and make the results really easy to consume and to watch.”

The app has a map of the different wards in eye-catching colours that is easy to follow and allows voters to engage in the process of elections. It also has a community section with “user-generated content” that is further verified per specific municipality.

Dan mentions that the South Africa attitude is one of “a strong reliance that someone else is going to fix something for you” and hope in better leadership. The premise behind ElectionSePush is to make information accessible to the public so that people can get involved “on a hyper-local scale” within their own wards. Being made aware of service delivery issues also assists in helping people plan their day, week and month.

From a political perspective, the app is a factual relay of information, a firmly “unbiased, unaffiliated platform” that remains on a neutral and positive stance; addressing problems with the hope of fixing them. ElectionSePush plans to hold elected representatives accountable long after the ballot boxes have been packed up. They also plan to add on additional features post-elections.

“A bit of AI and a lot of IEC” is where most of the information that appears on the app comes from. Dan says that they verify the accuracy and validity of the information before posting it.

The goal of ElectionSePush is to remain in the public space to publish data from municipalities and organizations that trusted and verified and allows for feedback on anything that looks suspicious.

Listen to the full interview with Ml Junaid Kharsany and Dan Southwood Wells here.