We can rebuild South Africa – we simply have to vote
A different kind of government is possible
THERE is a sense of great anticipation rippling through South Africa. As each day brings us closer to the May 29 national and provincial elections, questions are arising. Is it possible to unseat the ANC? Will our votes really bring change? What will South Africa look like after the votes are counted?
There are a few things we can know for sure. Once the votes are cast, load shedding will suddenly reappear. The deluge of ribbon-cutting, sod-turning and project launching will instantly evaporate. And politicians who traded insults like schoolyard bullies will jockey for power, perfectly content to manipulate the will of the electorate and backtrack on their commitments.
We know this because we know the players. We know their character and their motives. We know that their principles are entirely pliable and the good of the country is not even on the screen. It’s a sad reality.
Little wonder then why 14 million registered voters have no intention of voting on May 29, and why 13 million more have not even bothered to register.
In 1994, almost 20 million South Africans voted; 86% of all eligible voters. In the ensuing years, voter turnout steadily declined. By 2019, only 49% of eligible voters cast their vote. Less than half the people who could vote.
Today, there are more South Africans failing to vote than the number of votes cast in 1994. Tragically, the mere right to vote is no longer enough to bring voters to the ballot box.
Endless research has been done into why South Africans are no longer voting. The common thread, of course, is disillusionment. Politicians have proved themselves so duplicitous that the people no longer trust them.
There are zero consequences for those caught with their hand in the cookie jar, because the ANC simply uses its majority to make uncomfortable reports disappear.
Again and again, commissions of inquiry and courageous journalists reveal unthinkable corruption scandals, with the finger being pointed at some of highest-serving public officials and political leaders. But how many of the stories end in arrest, a prison sentence or even a loss of income?
No matter how much evidence of pervasive corruption in the government accumulates, nothing changes.
“So why,” voters ask, “would things change, even if we vote? The ANC could just claw back power by forming an unworkable alliance with the EFF or uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP).”
That, my fellow South Africans, is exactly why we need to vote.
At this point, we need to worry about our country’s survival under the ANC, as well as under some of the alternatives. The fear of an ANCEFF-MKP alliance has many South Africans tossing and turning in their beds at night. We desperately want to believe that the three, so vicious in their enmity, would never work together, for their alliance would be a disaster for South Africa.
For the past 30 years, the ANC’s rare efforts at governing the country have been thwarted by its alliance partners, the SACP and Cosatu. It was the SACP and Cosatu that derailed the Growth, Employment and Redistribution programme. Likewise, they halted implementation of the National Development Plan.
The ANC’s newest alliance partners would make their own demands, none of which bode well for South Africa’s survival. The EFF has said it would demand control of the National Treasury.
Its socialist ideologies, like the communist ideologies of the ANC’s alliance partners, are absurdly outdated, repeatedly proved by history to be unworkable, collapsing economies and harming the most vulnerable.
The MKP is the other side of the same coin. It wants to tear up the Constitution and abolish provinces, restoring the apartheid design of just four provinces, dictated to by a central government. Seriously; it’s in its manifesto.
Unfortunately, the ANC would just lap that up, for it is only too keen to get rid of provinces in order to centralise power at the top, in the hands of a few. The ANC did not want provinces to begin with. During constitutional negotiations towards a democratic dispensation, it was the IFP that fought for the creation of provinces.
We understood that in our heterogeneous country, with diverse cultures, geography and economic realities, one-size-fits-all policies could not be developed from a distance and sent down the line in a conveyor belt system, expecting them to meet every need and solve every problem.
What works in one place won’t work in another. And where some communities are struggling with drought and crop failure, others are struggling to evict drug lords from condemned high-rises.
The IFP sought to put the power of governance into the hands of the people, instead of into the hands of representatives it had never met who lived far, far away. Our insistence that a democratic South Africa be administered as close as possible to local level, won the creation of provincial governments. Thanks to the IFP, voters have had a glimpse of what could be, under a government other than the ANC.
The IFP’s 10-year governance of KwaZulu-Natal remains the high water mark of the democratic era. Our track record of service delivery remains a thorn in the flesh of our political opponents, because it constantly provides a yardstick by which their governance failure is amplified. The IFP led by example.
We have proved that a different kind of government is possible. Not only at provincial level but for the whole of South Africa. It can be secured in 2024, and it must be secured for the sake of us all. Self-evidently, nothing will change if we fail to vote. But if we do vote – if every single voter accepts their responsibility and exercises their power – we can change everything. We can get trustworthy leaders. We can get a government of integrity. We can rebuild South Africa.
We simply have to vote.