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South Africans are once again heading to the polls in what is a positive feature in the country’s three decades or so old democracy.
The upcoming local government elections present an opportunity not just for South Africans to choose who should represent them at municipal level but also for the country to correct some of the things that were not done right in our electoral democracy.
Amongst things that have gone wrong in our democracy is the unchallenged is the narrative of voter apathy which while purporting to be reporting about growing voter disillusionment has actually served to discourage South Africans from voting. This has been done over many years through the spread of of falsehoods to the extent that in the contemporary years of our democracy, we did indeed started observing a stay away of sorts from the polls. Despite the fact that in South Africa power is distributed proportionally in an election, we, as the media and NGOs that have their own regime change agenda, told of a story of a Mandela that had won a presidential election when in reality it was the ANC that had won elections. This is because a candidate is put on a ticket by a political party and not directly by the electorate. It seemed like an innocent attempt at simplifying the elections at the time. When Thabo Mbeki led the ANC into another election, our reporting sought to compare him with Mandela, with the narrative being that he could not fill the former Roben Islander’s shoes with him pushing back in his famous “Mandela’s shoes are ugly I would not want to wear them” reply to a journalist.
As the election approached there was already reports that the Democratic Party ( Now DA ) would record increased support as people would ditch the ANC as Madiba was no longer In office, claims that were disproved with Mbeki leading the ANC to landslide victories in both national and local elections.
When Jacob Zuma came into office, the campaign was now on steroids resulting in significant number of ANC supporters staying away from the polls 2009,2011 local government elections and seemingly continues, at least until the last election which saw the ANC for the first time failing to win outright. Leading into the 2024 national elections the campaign messaging from most of the ANC’s opponents was that of complete collapse, of the dream of 1994 had turned into a nightmare and as such people, a significant role number of them wrongly believed their staying home on election day would somewhat help solve the country’s problems. The ANC has suffered the most from this engineered disinterest in politics. Even political parties that exist on the strength of the dubiously created voter apathy, unashamedly criticise politics in general arguing the running of the country cannot be left to politicians. They say this to justify having a seat on the table when they don’t have actual constituents and thus don’t win anything in elections. “Politicians have destroyed our country. Politics is not the solution. We need everyone working together to bring change. We need new leaders,” says the messaging that seeks to deligitimise elections, the results in particular. According to these groupings, the election results must be questioned for as long as the right doesn’t do well and its democracy at work if it’s the former liberation movement that looses support.
Over the years there emerged another group who don’t vote apparently to punish the EFF over its immigration policy, more what it is perceived to be. Some who claim to be angry with EFF, voted ActionSA, Patriotic Alliance and whoever else told them they are suffering because of African migrants but majority of them simply did not vote.
The propaganda project has not just succeeded in reducing the electoral support of the ANC and the EFF but has largely created space for a wealthy 30 percent or so of the population to maximise its vote and eventually gain control of the country.
It is now time for the media to start questioning things much more than we have in the past, ensure fair coverage of the elections including resisting even our own subconscious biases. We should, instead of discouraging voters, teach them that local government elections gives them an opportunity to elect one of their own to lead them at a ward level and on the proportional list as well as that the ward vote is direct.
We are not saying all media outlets that pushed the narrative of voter apathy was part of a conspiracy to undermine majority rule. Many of them just did stories and innocently gave platform to analysts who at times push the narratives of their funders.
The upcoming election presents us of an opportunity to to self-correct and report responsibly and without fear or favour.
