They’re young, angry and black
Polls Apart | After years spent studying the ‘freedom generation’, the first to taste the fruits of the new democratic order, Katherine Newman and Ariane De Lannoy speak to young adults who are fed up with their political choices
2009. A café in the Cape Town city bowl. We were there to talk about the impending national elections with Khanyo (not her real name), a 30-something woman fluent in Xhosa, Sotho, English and Afrikaans.
A stylish, modern, optimistic woman with a good white-collar job at a local NGO, Khanyo reflected back on the landmark election of 1994.
“That was the most exciting time ever. My mom whipped out and bought this ‘ eggshell’ dress; she needed to go all out. It was like she was going to parliament. And I was so mad ’cause I couldn’t vote. I was young. And it was a huuuuge thing! The lines . . . they were ridiculous . . . People were excited. This was something they had never, never, never been given a chance to participate in. And they were proud — there was that cheeky, that ‘damn, I’m gonna vote’.”
Khanyo and her family had high hopes for a different life. Everything would change. There would be beautiful houses in green suburbs for her family and neighbours. Everyone would have a job and send their children to schools “as good as the white schools”. Beaches, playgrounds, shops and trains would no longer carry the hated “whites only” signs.
Nelson Mandela and the ANC would see to it that the dusty, grey, isolated townships created by the apartheid government and burdened by poverty and endemic health problems would become a thing of the past.
Khanyo is one of seven people who participated for two years in an intensive study of young adults in South Africa, 15 to 20 years after the advent of a new democracy, run by the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute and Johns Hopkins University. The purpose was to understand the experiences of the “freedom generation”.
Khanyo was born during the last 10 years of the apartheid regime. She is one of nearly 17 million young people who make up a large proportion of today’s voting population.
She remembers the segregation, the discrimination, the cold shoulder in shops. She also cherishes the joys and hopes of the transition that were shared by the majority in South Africa.
But by 2009 that confidence was starting to fade and her feelings surfaced in what was an almost unthinkable consequence, as least as her elders saw it: Khanyo did not register to vote, refusing to exercise the right that so many in the older generation had fought for.
Her voice rose to an angry pitch when she explained how disappointed she was in the behaviour of political elites.
What had become of those big promises? Why were poverty levels still so high? Why did millions of black people still live on the same isolated outskirts of town while the majority of white people still lived in fancy houses in the suburbs?
Khanyo is not one of those suffering from these conditions. When we started spending time with her, she lived in a comfortable Sea Point flat. She had an extensive wardrobe and a job she was proud of.
She worked in an organisation that included people of all races. She frequented nightclubs where people of her age hung out together. Given her “model C” education, she was able to navigate the social landscape more easily than many.
Today, she lives and works in the city and moves in multicultural circles without having to worry about carrying a pass, as her grandmother used to do. She belongs to the so-called new black middle class and sends her own daughter to a multiracial school, but only because she has been fortunate enough to survive the many rounds of restructuring at work that have occasionally threatened her job. Her extended family in Port Elizabeth helps her by looking after her daughter while Khanyo works in Cape Town.
South Africa has changed for the better, of that she is sure. But the pace has been agonisingly slow, as Khanyo sees it. High levels of poverty in townships and informal settlements remain even as multibillionrand gentrification is unfolding in virtually every corner of the Cape Town City Bowl.
Most distressing to her and her friends is the contrast between the lifestyle of the country’s ruling politicians and the majority of her countrymen.
President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla homestead sticks in her mind. This cannot possibly be the meaning of equality and integration, she says.
“Where are our big lanes with trees? Have you seen the informal areas? Have you seen the shacks where our children live?”
In Khanyo’s view, the ANC has lost its moral compass and no longer stands for the values that Mandela advanced in the 1990s. But worse, perhaps, Khanyo does not believe any of the political parties can be trust- ed to make a difference. So why would she bother to vote?
“I just don’t even wanna know anything about politics. It’s just one big joke! South Africa used to stand for [something] . . . we are survivors, we are fighters, we are a proud nation, we are achievers . . . that’s what we used to stand for. But now?
I’m not falling for it; I’m not buying it. I don’t buy ANC, I don’t buy DA, I don’t buy COPE or IFP. I don’t buy anything
We’re a joke. We are just like the closest thing to Zimbabwe.
“Our politics are all about power, greed, corruption. They are all hiding behind banners that ‘we’re gonna make a better life for all South Africans’. That’s their favourite slogan. But, in fact, they want to be the ruling party so that they can push all other people down and make you do whatever they want you to do. I’m not falling for it; I’m not buying it. I don’t buy ANC, I don’t buy DA, I don’t buy COPE or IFP. I don’t buy anything.”
Khanyo’s words seem to capture the sentiments of many among the younger generation of South Africans who are now eligible to vote.
In all corners of the Cape — from the suburbs and the City Bowl to the winelands and the Cape Flats — Khanyo’s doubts are echoed.
The South African Reconciliation Barometer conducted by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in 2012 found that 49% of all South Africans doubted whether national leaders were concerned with the views of ordinary people.
Political analysts and political parties wonder which way the vote will swing in this, the 20th anniversary year of the first democratic elections. Some have wondered whether levels of apathy among the youth would lead them not to vote.
But apathy does not capture Khanyo’s sentiments. She pays close attention to current events and cares deeply about the country’s direction. She rejects the opportunity to vote not out of apathy, but out of disappointment with the political options.
But although many of the younger generation may sit out the “anniversary election”, a significant proportion of young citizens have, in fact, decided to participate.
The Independent Electoral Commission estimates that 4.9 million of the 20- to 29-yearolds eligible to vote have registered for the elections. Many of them may no longer feel the strong allegiance to the ANC. Others may decide that the ANC is, after all, still the only party they can trust to not “bring back the whites-only signs”, as one of Khanyo’s friends worried aloud about the intentions of the DA.
Khanyo is just one among many young people in the country who remain passionate about the dream of a better, more equal South Africa. What they are looking for is a party that exemplifies those values in word and deed — one that bypasses infighting, power struggles and corruption. One that harkens back to the values that were so clear to the generation that walked them to the polls 20 years ago.
Newman is the James B Knapp dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University in the US. De Lannoy is a senior researcher at the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town