The great polling day stayaway
Only a few have chosen who will govern South Africa’s municipalities
Fewer than 30% of South Africans made a decision on Monday, 1 November. That decision has seen the ANC’S support at local government level plummet to about 46%. This is the poorest showing the ruling party has ever seen.
The elections saw only 12 million — 46% — of the 26.2 million registered voters turn up at the polls, the lowest voter turnout since 1994.
In 2006, the voter turnout was 48% of those registered to vote. That equated to 12.7 million votes for the ANC and 3.2 million for the Democratic Alliance. The Eastern Cape had the highest turnout.
Five years later, in 2011, the voter turnout increased to 57.6%, giving the ANC about 16.5 million votes. The DA doubled its support base, receiving 6.3 million votes, most being in the Western Cape.
In 2016, the ANC saw more than 16 million people support it. And 58% of the registered voters showed up at polling stations.
But the ANC’S support began to steadily decrease from 61% in the 2011 local government elections to 53% in 2016. This decline was mostly felt in the metropolitan areas. This is when the ruling party lost control of Nelson Mandela Bay metro, the City of Tshwane and the City of Johannesburg. This was a win for the DA, which increased its support by 3% from the previous 23%.
But this year the electorate had a dismal showing. The numbers plummeted for the ANC and the DA.
Fewer than 30% — 12 million — of eligible voters made their mark in the 2021 elections.
With varying reasons for the stayaway — including the Covid-19 pandemic and claims of insufficient time to register, allegations of technology failing — the lack of trust in the political system and in political parties has been at the forefront.
While unveiling their election satisfaction survey on Wednesday, the Human Sciences Research Council made special mention of a distrust in the political system as a chief cause for this week’s low voter numbers.
“Some of our other research is pointing to a very disturbing decline in trust in democracy in South Africa and, of course, democracy is not only about voting — it is about public participation,” said Narnia Bohlermuller, the executive director of the council’s research programme on democracy, governance and service delivery. “But this is the reality, and this could be one of the reasons why we had a relatively low turnout.”
For Collette Schulz-herzenberg, a senior lecturer in Stellenbosch University’s department of political science and an expert in voter and political behaviour, Covid-19 was a contributing factor, but only a small part of the overall explanation. Likewise the fact that voting day was on a Monday, making it a long weekend.
Another significant element worth considering is the relatively young age of the voting population. Schulzherzenberg has done extensive research on how the “born-free” generation, coming to age over the past decade, are less inclined to vote.
“The impact of young people on aggregate turnout is really starting to show itself now — I’ve been showing the effects since 2014. 2019 was very pronounced and, unsurprisingly, there are more young people in the electorate who aren’t registering or voting and it’s depressing the aggregate turnout rate,” she said. “From a mathematical point of view I think that’s a large part of the explanation.”
The sense of disenfranchisement is likely to be the main reason for low voting numbers. Two Afrobarometer studies in particular serve as an accurate portent for the poor turnout. In July, research into governance found that only 54% of South Africans believe that democracy is preferable to any other form of government. This is a 16% drop in less than a decade and places the country near the bottom of the 34 African countries surveyed.
Satisfaction with how democracy is working has also declined significantly — from 60% in 2011 to 42% in 2018. This sentiment was mirrored in a separate study in August, which found that fewer than 30% trusted the ruling ANC and opposition parties, while an incredible 67% of respondents said they would be “willing to give up elections if a nonelected government could provide security, housing and jobs”.
But, around the world, the “Covid context” was always destined to be a question mark because it has been everywhere in which voting has taken place over the past two calendar years.
During the inquiry authorised by the Electoral Commission of South Africa, overseen by Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, he referenced data from the The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, stating: “While many countries experienced a decline in voter turnout, in many cases the decline was small, and some countries even experienced increases in voter turnout.”
The report went on to examine a number of case studies that swung both ways. Some, such as the municipal elections in France, saw a significant decrease in voters. Others went the other way, including the 2020 United States presidential elections that saw a record near two-thirds of eligible voters making their mark.
Closer to home, Zambia held elections in August. Although the poll was beset by irregularities, it ultimately saw power transferred out of the hands of Edgar Lungu of the Patriotic Front — perhaps enforcing the idea that the people will have their say regardless of the pandemic.
“My sense of it is that it did not have a substantial effect. People did not fail to turn out for the elections because of Covid,” says Nicole Beardsworth, a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand who worked in Lusaka during the elections.
“On the day you saw enormous numbers of people, really committed, going out to vote, standing in long queues. No one from what I could tell decided not to vote by virtue of being concerned about Covid.”
The situation was much the same in Uganda, Beardsworth said. Although the pandemic was used to inhibit opposition party campaigns — and was the centre of opposition leader Bobi Wine’s legal troubles — the prevailing academic opinion is that it did not have a significant effect on the will of people to vote.
Lockdowns in South Africa have been some of the more stringent that Africa has seen. But, the weeks leading up to, and weeks of the election have seen some of the lowest sevenday infection averages the country has seen since the virus arrived.
“My understanding of what happened in the last few weeks, the last few months, is that a lot of people didn’t find any of the candidates particularly motivating,” Beardsworth said. “There was no one they wanted to vote for. Instead people thought that either ‘my vote won’t change anything’ or that none of the candidates particularly motivated them to go out to vote. And if you look at the Afrobarometer numbers, this seems to bear out. There is this deep sense of disaffection growing in South Africa which no one seems to be addressing.”
67% said they were ‘willing to give up elections if a nonelected government can provide security, housing and jobs’