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As South Africa prepares for yet another local government election expected to be highly contested, we are reminded of how the country’s electoral politics have been marked by what can be called a lack of public interest, a dynamic that has affected the outcome negatively leading to coalition governments in seven of the nine provinces as well as nationally.
Often, the story of the so-called ‘voter apathy’ is told without proper context and or adequate detail such as who is staying away and why.
In this edition we try and tell the story differently by bringing in what has been missing all along. As a publication we are generally reluctant to critique fellow media houses and for that reason where it its about the fourth estate we would address the industry without singling out individual companies.
Why are voters staying away
In the early days of South Africa’s democracy the African National Congress was the popular political party enjoying a two-thirds majority at all levels of government. Voter participation was also high with majority of those who qualified to vote Showing Up. This changed in the lead up to the 2009 general elections when the mainstream media started reporting about voter apathy, a new phenomenon at the time.
The reporting, initially appeared to be aimed at reducing the dominance of the ANC and seemingly worked.
What it achieved was to convince the majority that their vote had not benefited them and thus there was no incentive for voting. At the same time there was a proliferation of political parties mostly on the left which is where black citizens usually take their vote.
As the narrative that South Africa was yet another failed state in Africa, a ‘banana republic’ they call it, the ANC continued loosing support while no other black alternative rose to replace it.
This also saw the creation of many mini ANCs albeit not as well organised who have achieved nothing more than prop up individual careers. In fact as things stand, the EFF and UDM are the only splinters that were formed because of the expulsion of individuals from the ANC while the rest of the parties were founded by individuals who could not get their way in the liberation movement. This proliferation has benefited the proponents of apartheid who have rebranded and now have just under 30 percent electoral support under two main platforms.
Mayoral candidate confusion
More voter confusion is now being created right under our watch through the so called mayoral candidates, a concept not provided for at all in the country’s electoral system. By introducing the concept of mayoral candidates, the right has once again outplayed the left in that voters may endorse them believing they’re backing the individual when in reality the mayorship belongs to a political party which means the individual, regardless of their popularity, may be removed at any time
In fact there’s the infamous example of Herman Mashaba who was removed from the mayorship of his then political party the DA colluding with the ANC to remove him. Mashaba was popular with residents at the time as was the coalition government he was leading but his failure or refusal to pursue the DA’s policies meant he had gone rogue and thus needed to be reigned in with the DA at the time charging he had seized representing and had effectively became an EFF mayor.
While the DA may have been acting out of bad intentions at the time and driven by something else other than the interest of Joburg residents, the party was legally within its rights to act against Mashaba for his defiance. He consistently claims that he had two options, to continue service delivery in the manner he had been doing with the ANC and EFF which included passing leftist policies such as insourcing and expropriation without compensation when his own party actually wanted him to outsource more services and had lined up preferred companies with links to leading figures in the party such as Tony Leon, the influential former party leader now accused of state capture using DA ministers in the GNU as well councilors in various municipalities. Whatever the fallout, the DA was within its rights to remove Mashaba and the lesson for voters is that no one votes for a mayor, a Premier or President. The only position that South African voters directly votes a person into is a ward councilor. It is because of this legal reality that political parties at all times never put a ward councilor as a mayor or MMC. In the event a party fires a ward councilor, that organisation automatically loses the seat and a by-election is triggered whereas in the case of Proportional Representative councilors, they can be removed whenever a party wants to.
Going into this election it is important for voters to know that they will be voting for political parties, that they can only directly pick a councilor at the ward level. Elections are a political process and no one should ever tell you there’s a candidate that doesn’t represent politics.
