The road to SA’s 2024 national and provincial elections is in full swing. People would be hard pressed to find an election post-1994 that has had so much interest among parties and voters up to two years before the vote. From the establishment of new parties, to talks of coalitions, SA is abuzz with talk of an election that could fundamentally change SA democracy and the political landscape.
On the other side of the world, another country knows all about the buildup to historic elections. In 2020, the US voted to unseat an incumbent first-term president, Donald Trump, when they elected Joe Biden – a feat only achieved once before in their modern democratic era. While many factors contributed to this change in government, one that stood out particularly in the south of the US was higher voter turnout.
Traditionally, “red” Republican states like Texas and Georgia saw an increase in black, Hispanic and young voters. Georgia turned “blue” for Joe Biden and the Democrats after decades of Republican dominance.
Pundits in the US credit this Democrat win to voter rights campaigns led by people like Stacey Abrams and civic organisations like the New Georgia Project in the two years preceding the 2020 elections. Their efforts to fight to remove regulations that inhibited voters from minority groups from voter participation and rollout of mass civic and voter education saw hundreds of thousands of new voters register and turn out in a vote that changed the course of history.
Similarly, #Elections2024 in SA will only meet the promise of the growing expectation for meaningful change if the quality and quantity of electoral participation increases. Declining voter participation poses a serious challenge to this. The official voter turnout has been on the decline. From a high of 89% in 1999, voter turnout in the 2019 general election saw an all-time low of 66%.
Although local government elections have always had lower voter turnout than general elections, the 2021 voter turnout of below 50% was a reality check for even the big parties, signalling that voter non-participation is a threat not only to the fates and fortunes of candidates and parties, but indeed the strength of democracy in SA as a whole.
When unregistered people of voting age are added, the picture is much more dire. Of about 40-million potential voters, only 12-million showed up. In the last national and provincial elections in 2019, only 49% of the total people of voting age turned out. Decreasing voter participation signals a looming democratic crisis as the governments elected from these elections risk a crisis of legitimacy.
World-wide, declining voter patterns are based broadly on two issues: voters feeling disenfranchised because of barriers to voting, or disillusioned voters who have either lost faith in the impact of the vote or see no hope for change in the options on the ballot. In SA this is no different.
A study by political foundation KAS showed 56% people who do not vote cite disenfranchisement due to access to voting stations, work or not being registered in the correct voting district, while 40% cite reasons related to disillusionment with politicians and the perception that voting has little impact on governance outcomes. This is particularly true for black, Indian and coloured voters.
While black, Hispanic and young voters in a place like Georgia, US, may be part of minority groups, black and young voters in SA are by far a majority. Yet disenfranchisement and disillusionment are present in both countries, underpinned by histories of oppression and continued racial and class marginalisation. Voter non-participation is as much about systemic issues as it is about feelings of being unseen and unheard in one’s society.
Getting people who have walked away from voting en masse back to the ballot will require more than emotive appeals to the history of Struggle for the vote by providing hope for voting as more meaningful when it is accompanied by new options on the ballot, more opportunities to engage politicians before and after and a participatory democracy that leaves no-one behind.
On October 8, political think tank Rivonia Circle will host New Georgia Project CEO, Nsé Ufot, at a workshop, “Mobilising People’s Electoral Power toward 2024”, to exchange ideas on how civic education and electoral participation can be strengthened before, during and well after the 2024 elections.
Civil society and citizens at large have a role to play beyond turning up to vote. Ours is to ensure that the road to 2024 is paved with people’s power, aspirations and will to co-create South Africa 2.0.
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