The announcement in Parliament of the election date by President Thabo Mbeki is good news to all South Africans. But it is only half the story. The other half is the challenge of making the days and campaigns leading to the election day as peaceful and violence-free as humanly possible.

In his congratulatory statement today, the General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, the Reverend Dr Molefe Tsele, warned that "we should not turn this important phase of our collective life into an occasion where we celebrate political victory on the graves of victims of political violence".

"Excited as the SACC is about the announcement of April 14 as the election date, we have to caution and warn our people not to allow the electoral process to degenerate into a situation of conflict and anarchy. If this were to happen, history would judge us harshly. We fought hard to bring democracy to this land, and should not spoil it by resorting to undemocratic tendencies," said Tsele.

"However, we must salute all political parties for the responsible manner in which they have conducted their election campaigns until now. We urge all parties and their followers to continue with political tolerance. As we move towards the elections, the SACC will monitor the situation and we will continue to condemn any form of political violence and intimidation as such behaviour negates the gains we have made as a nation."

Tsele said to ensure that the electoral process was successful, the SACC would join other non-partisan civil society organisations in observing the entire electoral process.

"We have formed the South African Civil Society Observation Coalition (SACSOC) to lead this observation exercise.

"We must as the SACC express our concern about unrealistic promises being made by political parties which raise the expectations of voters to unrealistic levels, and accordingly we encourage political parties to steer clear of such unrealistic promises.

"In conclusion, the SACC wishes to take this opportunity to make a final call on those who have not yet registered to use the available time - until midnight on Wednesday, 11 February - to register so that they may also be able to vote on April 14. We also wish to state categorically that the SACC offers the Independent Electoral Commission our unreserved support to ensure that the elections of April 14 are free, fair, credible and legitimate."

Issued by Fr. Joe Mdhlela (083 641 1281) on behalf of the SACC