This time, the stayaway vote overshadows election results
Young South Africans show an alarming lack of interest in choosing their government, writes Ray Hartley
YOU could make a case that the real winner of the 2014 election was nowhere to be seen when the ANC and the DA celebrated their national and provincial victories. Apathy claimed some 13 million adults who qualified to vote.
Some 42% of eligible voters — some registered, some not — opted not to participate in the election on Wednesday.
Of the 31.4 million citizens of voting age who qualified, 25.4 million registered and only 18 million actually voted.
Seven million were registered but did not turn up, and a further six million did not even bother to register. The impact of this growing apathy was that, for the first time since 1994, the vote tally for the party that won the national election was less than half the number of registered voters.
The ANC’s roughly 11 million votes represents about 43% of registered voters. In all four previous elections, it could at least be said that the victorious
What this means for democracy is a matter for debate
party had a majority among registered voters, whether or not they actually voted.
It is telling that the 11 million who voted for the ANC this year is still fewer than the 12 million who voted for it in 1994, when the population was substantially smaller.
In the 2009 election, the ANC majority represented 50.2% of registered voters. In 2004, it achieved 52.6% and in 1999, 58%. No figure is available for 1994 because there was no registration for that election.
And, before DA supporters crow at this cutting down to size of the ANC’s support, they need to digest the fact that their party achieved a mere 16% of the total registered-voter population.
Measured against the total potential voting pool, the electoral achievements are even less impressive. The ANC’s vote tally, for example, was a mere 36% of those eligible to vote, including unregistered voters.
Exactly what this mass absenteeism means for democracy is a matter for debate. Some believe that these numbers are irrelevant because those who did not vote exercised a choice not to do so of their own free will.
What is concerning is the growing trend to stand on the sidelines. Younger South Africans are by far the most apathetic. The Independent Electoral Commission has revealed that only 23% of voters aged 18 or 19 were registered after its drive to sign up voters last year.
The Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal achieved the highest registration in this age group, 27%. In Gauteng, a mere 19% of this group bothered to register — fewer than one in five.
Only 55% of those aged between 20 and 29 registered, and Gauteng again showed the lowest interest — only 44% were registered.
Tellingly, those with the strongest memories of the apartheid era — people aged 30 and older — are the most likely to register, with 100% of those aged 80 and older registered.