Johannesburg – For the sixth time since democracy, South Africa has held successful municipal elections. This is no mean feat for a young African democracy. Elections after elections, our Independent Electoral Commission has risen to the occasion.
But the real hero of our electoral democracy is the voter. Born in the long and winding voting queues of April 27, 1994, the South African voter has been and continues to be the miracle of our democracy.
Like those voting queues of ’94, that seemed to zigzag up the hills, down the valleys, and across the forests, from Beitbridge to Hout Bay; the generosity and enthusiasm of the South African voter have been unending.
We will not forget how, on April 27, 1994, Winnie Mandela traveled from Soweto to Katlehong, there to vote for the first time in her life.
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“I feel two inches taller than when I came in. I just want to jump,” said Desmond Tutu after voting in Gugulethu.
“It is the realization of hopes and dreams that we have cherished over decades,” said Madiba after voting at Ohlange High School in Inanda.
Since then, the South African voter has returned to the voting queue at every election season, each time without fail and without violence. Perhaps, in each election, the South African voter has been searching for the thrill that caused Tutu to want to leap in the air, after voting.
What we know for sure is that every time the South African voter has made the trip to the voting queue, South African democracy has grown several inches taller.
High voter turnouts have been the hallmark of South African elections until Monday, November 1, 2021. This time around, 30% voted and a whopping 70% stayed away.
For all the infamy South Africans have earned because of their fondness of boycotts, the South African voter has been the exception that proves the rule.
Something big must have gone awfully wrong for the South African voter to behave so out of character. I bet there were 27-million family meetings of difficult conversations and several million mini-wars inside the souls of millions of South African voters – before the decision to boycott the 2021 elections was reached.
And so, last Thursday evening, I cocked my neck, cleared my throat, and opened my mouth to join my fellow South Africans in singing the national anthem, ahead of the speech of the president declaring the elections results free and fair.
But something paranormal happened to me. Instead of the prayerful song of Sontonga, I bellowed out B.B. King’s 1969 heart-rending blues song The thrill is gone.
I couldn’t stop myself. It seems to me that if the 2021 voter turnout statistics are anything to go by, for the South African voter, the thrill of voting is gone and so is the spell of our brand of electoral democracy.
Has the voting thrill truly and irrevocably deserted the South African voter, you may ask?
It is not as if we have no clue what has been eating the South African voter. For each of the 27 years of democracy, a million South Africans appear to have turned their backs on our electoral system. This year, all 27-million of them (14-million who did not turn up and 13-million who did not register) stayed away.
Throughout the week, the media showed us snippets of our haggard, rugged and hungry-looking compatriots, huddled in front of their shacks. Their eyes blank and their voices are worn out, they repeatedly asked rhetorically: “What
the difference does it make if I vote?” And so, they chose to stay away, knowingly, deliberately, and perhaps strategically.
When President Cyril Ramaphosa issued his “Thuma Mina” proclamation in 2018, he might have been jumping the gun by answering a question that no one was asking then. According to the holy book, the prerequisite question should be: “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
Now, the answer to that question should be considered more carefully than we have recently witnessed. Indeed, whom will God send to awaken the 27-million strong army of disenchanted voters? Any capable political party or credible political leader anywhere?
That’s the quintessential question posed by the 2021 municipal elections. That’s our national Mayday call.
- Professor Maluleke is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship. Follow him on Twitter @ProfTinyiko
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