I have a confession to make. A few months ago, a 26-year-old who works daily on constitutional democracy, can cite chapter 7 of the Constitution from memory and genuinely believes local government is the most consequential sphere of our democratic architecture, asked me who my ward councillor was. I went quiet. I did not know.
That moment of silence told me something I had been reluctant to admit: civic knowledge and civic practice are two different things.
It is entirely possible to believe deeply in democracy and yet be disconnected from the very institution that is supposed to repair your pothole, build your library, connect your water and answer your phone call.
I suspect I am not alone. In fact, I am fairly certain I am not.
Voter turnout in South Africa’s local government elections dropped from 58% in 2016 to 46% in 2021. In that local election, only 15% of eligible voters aged 18 to 21 registered to vote.
Recent public opinion research by the Government Communication and Information System reveals that more than 60% of unregistered young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 do not intend to register to vote before the 2026 elections.
These are not just abstract statistics. Instead, they describe a generation — my generation — retreating from the most proximate expression of democratic power we possess.
This retreat becomes all the more striking when you consider the weight of the moment in which we find ourselves. This year marks 50 years since the uprising of June 16, 1976, altered the moral course of our country.
Young South Africans inherited a constitutional democracy for which others paid dearly — with their freedom, their futures and in many cases, their lives. To disengage from the inheritance is to disregard the sacrifices all of those who came before us had made. It is a forfeiture.
The question we need to wrestle with is not simply why young people are disengaged but whether we are even asking the question rigorously, honestly and with the evidence to back our answers.
That is precisely why a coalition of institutions I am proud to be part of — the FW de Klerk Foundation, the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, the University of the Free State, Radio KC and Sunday World — has come together to launch a civic research initiative before the 2026 local government elections.
It is called the Local Governance, Democratic Participation and Municipal Accountability Assessment and centres on a public survey designed to hear, directly and empirically, what South African citizens know, think, feel and experience when it comes to their
municipalities.
The survey, developed under the academic leadership of Dr Harlan Cloete of the University of the Free State, is not a “got-cha exercise”. It does not begin with a verdict. It asks questions such as: “I know my ward councillor” and “public participation in my municipality is meaningful”. It asks you to score your honest reaction on a scale from “strongly disagree to strongly agree”. It asks whether your community’s needs are reflected in municipal priorities. Whether you have ever reported a service delivery problem. Whether local elections, in your experience, lead to improvements.
These are deceptively simple questions. Answered at scale across Gauteng, the Free State and the Western Cape, their aggregate becomes something powerful: a mirror that our municipalities, our policymakers and our civic institutions cannot look away from.
The initiative is not partisan. It does not campaign for or against any political party. It will not tell you who to vote for. What it will do is generate evidence — real, peer-reviewed and publicly disseminated evidence — about the state of participatory democracy at the level where most South Africans encounter the state every day.
The partnership is perhaps the most unusual thing about it. The FW de Klerk Foundation and the Thabo Mbeki Foundation do not always share the same heritage.
That is the point. Democratic accountability is not a left-wing or a right-wing concern. Service delivery failures do not spare you because of your political affiliation.
And the crisis of youth disengagement from local governance is a threat to the constitutional order that both foundations exist to protect and advance.
The Electoral Commission of South Africa has positioned the 2026 local government elections as “a young people’s election”. They are right to do so. But elections are not the beginning and end of democracy. They are one act in a much longer civic story. The chapters in between — the ward meetings, the Integrated Development Plan processes, the complaint hotlines and the public participation forums — are where the real work of self-governance happens and where most of us, myself included, have been largely absent.
The survey launches on June 16, Youth Day, deliberately.
Take 15 minutes. Answer honestly. Tell us what you know, what you believe and what you have experienced. Not for us. For the record. For the evidence base that will inform how municipalities are held accountable before November.
If we cannot answer the question “Do you know your ward councillor?” perhaps it is time we found out why.
- Joosub is manager of constitutional advancement at the FW de Klerk Foundation. The survey launches on Youth Day, June 16, through Sunday World and partner platforms.
- I have a confession to make.
- A few months ago, a 26-year-old who works daily on constitutional democracy, can cite chapter 7 of the Constitution from memory and genuinely believes local government is the most consequential sphere of our democratic architecture, asked me who my ward councillor was.
- I went quiet.
- I did not know.
- That moment of silence told me something I had been reluctant to admit: civic knowledge and civic practice are two different things.
