Why more than 6 million youth shun elections

SOME 9 million South Africans want nothing to do with the electoral process. They have not registered to vote. Of these, 6 million are under the age of 30.

The non-enfranchised almost equal the number of voters who supported the ANC in the last general election.

They outnumber all the voters who supported opposition parties put together. Why might this be?

Dire poverty and lack of wherewithal to participate are no doubt part of the explanation.

But disillusionment and a belief that their vote cannot make a difference is a more significant cause.

There is a feeling, widely shared – and particularly among those who have lived their entire lives in a democratic South Africa – that the government is not working to deliver people’s needs.

There is no realistic chance of kicking the government out. So why participate in the process?

Democracy is, above all, a process where government peacefully changes hands according to the will of the people.

When the people expressed themselves collectively, in 1955, in the Freedom Charter, their first demand was that “the people shall govern!” This was the primary mandate of the liberation movement.

The intention of the mandate was that in a free and democratic South Africa the people would be able to express their needs and the government would work to deliver them. That has not come to pass.

The preamble to the Constitution promises a democratic society in which the government is based on the will of the people. The National Assembly is supposed to represent the people and to ensure government by the people. That is not our situation.

Leadership figures showed where their priorities lay well before the Zuma years.

In November 2004, the ANC national spokesperson, Smuts Ngonyama, asserted that, “I did not join the Struggle to be poor!” This is a perfectly reasonable sentiment for those who fought in the Struggle; I have written previously about Struggle heroes not receiving pensions and being left homeless.

Ngonyama, on the other hand, was defending his own R160 million stake in a BEE transaction.

Seemingly oblivious to their mandate to restore the wealth of our country to the people, other cadres followed on a grand scale.

It is not easy to write this: for many of my generation, the ANC still represents the Struggle and victory over apartheid.

But the born-free generation measures their lives by their own experience post-1994. Having never suffered under the apartheid regime they do not suck the oxygen of liberation with the same gratitude as their elders – and nor should they.

Freedom is not a gift, it is a right, and they owe the ANC nothing.

Improvements in housing, water and electricity supply are not measured on a scale against 1993, but against the access to such which is, again, their right.

What youths between the ages of 15 and 24 understand is that one in every three of them is neither in employment, education, nor training.

And that all their lives, the electoral process has run as follows: first those who are inclined and able to register, register. Then those who are inclined to vote, vote. And then the ANC wins.

Our young democracy cannot afford to lose a generation if it hopes to survive.

Our politicians need to engage with and listen to those who shun them, recognise that government is also a servant of those 6 million non-voting youths, and that young people are not only represented in sycophant youth leagues or brigades, but by the huge majority who have rejected the democratic process and whose voice is expressed on the streets rather than the ballot box.

It is their needs that, above all, must be addressed. The system must visibly work to earn their trust. Only when their trust is won will the people govern. And only if their trust is earned will our young democracy live to middle age.