Don’t Throw Away What They Died To Give You: Vote

There is a dangerous mood spreading in our townships, our villages and our suburbs. It goes like this:

“Voting doesn’t change anything.”
“They are all the same.”
“I’m staying home this time.”

We understand the anger. We feel it too.

We see the potholes that never get fixed. The water that stops without warning. The lights that go off. The jobs that never come. The councillors who disappear after election day and only return when they want your vote again.

But staying home is not protest. Staying home is surrender.

And for Black South Africans, staying home is a betrayal of a history we dare not forget.

Once, we were not allowed to vote at all

For more than 300 years of colonialism, and for 46 years of formal apartheid from 1948 to 1994, voting in South Africa was a whites-only privilege.

Black people — the majority in this country — were not citizens in their own land. We were subjects. We were given pass books, not ballot papers. We were given Bantustans, not a say in Parliament.

White South Africans, less than 15% of the population, voted for a government that decided where Black people could live, where they could work, where they could go to school, which hospital could treat them, and whether they could even be in a city after dark.

Your grandmother could not vote for the mayor who decided if her street got tar or gravel. Your grandfather could not vote for the government that sent him to work in a mine for a pittance. Your parents could not vote against the laws that forced them to carry a dompas.

People were jailed for demanding the vote. People were beaten for demanding the vote. People were killed for demanding the vote.

On 27 April 1994, for the first time, a Black woman from Ga-Molepo, a Black farmworker from Groblersdal, a Black domestic worker from Polokwane, stood in the same queue as a white farmer and cast a vote that counted the same.

That queue was not just an election. It was a revolution.

Not voting is not neutral

When you don’t vote, you don’t punish the politicians. You reward the worst of them.

Low turnout does not scare corrupt councillors. It protects them. It means they only need a small, loyal group to keep them in power, while the angry majority stays home and complains on WhatsApp.

Look at what happened in the 2026 local elections. In many municipalities, turnout was below 50%. In Elias Motsoaledi, only 46.1% of registered voters bothered to vote. That means more than half of the people who could decide the future of Groblersdal, Dennilton and Monsterlus handed that decision to someone else.

When you stay home, someone else decides who gets the tender. Someone else decides who gets the RDP house. Someone else decides if your municipality gets a mayor who works, or a mayor who steals.

Your silence is counted. Just not in your favour.

Yes, we are disappointed. Vote anyway.

This newspaper is not asking you to vote for any party. We are not here to campaign for the ANC, DA, EFF, MKP, SACP, Bolsheviks or anyone else.

We are asking you to vote for yourself.

Vote because you are angry. Vote because service delivery has failed. Vote because you want to punish a party that has failed you — that is what the ballot is for. You cannot punish them by staying home. You punish them by voting them OUT.

Vote because the people who fought for this right did not have the luxury of being disappointed and staying home. They faced teargas, dogs, bullets and prison — and they still believed one vote could change a country.

If they could risk their lives for the vote, surely we can risk one hour in a queue?

Your vote is your power

The apartheid government feared one thing more than anything else: a Black majority with a vote. That is why they denied it for so long.

Do not give them, posthumously, what they wanted. Do not voluntarily give up the power they were terrified of you having.

Next election, don’t say: “My vote won’t matter.”

Your vote mattered in 1994. It ended apartheid and it mattered in 2026 too but you chose to abstain.

Removing the ANC and Stopping the EFF
This has been the agenda of white political parties which they expressed clearly in their campaigns for both the 2024 National and Provincial Elections as well as the 2026 Local Government Elections.
This agenda, as pursued by the Democratic Alliance and the Freedom Front Plus, is consistent with their politics as it seeks to protect the interests of their constituents ( white South Africans) against the transformation objectives of both the liberation movement and the more youthful Economic Freedom Fighters. While morally wrong, the agenda of these white political parties is completely legal and considered fair game in the context of electoral politics.
Where it gets wrong and unacceptable is when leading black voices such as academics and thought leaders such as Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi allow themselves to be co-opted into it to the extent that they articulate it more proficiently than its crafters who are the beneficiaries of apartheid.
May we also clarify that this view is by no means a promotional piece for the ANC or the EFF but an observation that the 2 most organised black organisations have been targeted for being removed and being stopped by way of lying to the struggling masses that voting serves no purpose. This amid a well orchestrated proliferation of the black vote.

Your vote will matter again.

Go and register. Go and check where you vote. Go and stand in that queue — for your grandmother who couldn’t, for your children who will, and for yourself.

Because if you don’t vote, don’t complain when others choose for you.

— The Editor, The Reporter Newspaper