Extract
The outcome of the elections will be debated and analysed for some time to come, but what is clear is that many South Africans were not particularly impressed or satisfied with what was on offer. After 25 years of democracy, many voters are still scouring the wilderness for a political home with which they’re comfortable.
Even those who did vote seem to have done so with some misgivings. We may still be cock-a-hoop about our democracy — best constitution in the world and all that! — but the enthusiasm is apparently no longer widely shared.
Voter turnout has shown a calamitous decline in recent years, from 88% in 1999 to 65% in 2019 — a drop of more than 20 percentage points in 20 years. Such figures should jolt us out of our complacency. Our democracy is not at all in rude health. Scarier still is the fact that almost half the country’s young people did not register to vote, and of those who did, some didn’t bother to turn up at a polling station. Maybe young people don’t have the passion of their parents who experienced the iniquities of apartheid first-hand. But it could also be that none of the political parties on parade is attractive enough to young people, which is surprising given that some of the parties have a youth league of some sort. If they are already engaged in political activity, they should surely be more inclined to vote in elections.
But political apathy cannot be blamed solely on the youth. There is general disillusionment with the political establishment that seems to cut across all age grou...
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