Older voters disillusioned after the

Many of them feel that the promises made at the dawn of democracy have not been met

When Hammanskraal resident Elizabeth Ramoki voted for the first time in 1994, she was full of optimism for the country, but that has wilted away in the ensuing 30 years.

If it was up to her, she would abstain from voting in the 29 May general elections, but she fears that doing that could jeopardise her access to her social grant.

“The only reason I am going to vote is because those who come during campaigning have been telling us that we are going to lose our grants if we do not vote.

“I am scared of losing that grant so I have to go and vote,” the 66-year-old said this week.

“They told us they will come and pick up all the grannies to go to the voting station, so I am scared that if I don’t go, they might see and I might lose my grant.”

Compared with her enthusiasm for the first democratic elections in 1994, Ramoki now sees voting for any party as a waste of time, saying they have failed to deliver services such as water to her area.

“We are now forced to buy water because we don’t trust the water from tankers. We have been told that this water issue will be resolved for many years but we are still sitting without water,” she says.

“There is no need to vote because we will only see them now, during campaigning, and they make promises which they will not keep. After that, they will go ... and we will see them during campaigning when they want votes again.”

Hammanskraal has made the headlines for poor service delivery in recent years. Last year, the semi-rural township was rocked by the death of more than 20 people in a cholera outbreak stemming from the Tshwane municipality’s failure to provide residents with clean drinking water.

The metro has failed in this regard for more than 16 years. In 2020, the Human Rights Commission declared the water in Hammanskraal not fit for human consumption.

Ramoki and other residents have resorted to digging their own water wells over fears that the water provided through the city’s tankers was contaminated. But this option was shut down recently after the land was allocated for a school.

Cape Town resident Steve (not his real name) is generally happy with how his city has been run over the years, but cannot say the same for the rest of the country.

The 69-year-old has backed the Democratic Alliance (DA) over the past three decades, his decision largely based on his friends convincing him in 1994 that the party was the best option for him, as a white person in the new political dispensation.

Steve has kept on voting for the DA over the years because he was impressed by how it ran the Western Cape, despite not agreeing with some of the party’s values, as a Christian.

“For example, they are for abortion and LGBTQI rights, and in my religious belief, I’m not for that. Most of the time, people vote for parties which they do not necessarily agree with in terms of their values,” he said.

“I don’t agree with the DA in some of its policies but I’ve lived in Cape Town and I have seen how they run their infrastructure, the policing and other things, so that’s the only reason I’d vote for them. You fix my potholes, load-shedding, crime and I’m a happy guy. That’s all I care about.”

Steve does not agree with the view of other white people that the country has gone down the drain because black people are in charge, saying he believes the real problem is that politically-connected people without the necessary qualifications have been put in positions of power.

“I lived in Spain for 10 years and came back in the late 1980s. My parents were missionaries in Durban, so I had a lot of interaction with black people. I worked in the retail sector before 1994, and my boss was a