Active citizenship requires more than electing leaders every five years
Around this time last year, as SA was gearing up for the local government elections, my colleague Sithembile Mbete and I decided it was time to include civic education in the roster of programming we offer at our organisation, Futurelect.
Supporting young people and women at both the supply and the demand side of democracy in Africa
— both the candidates and the voters — had been our aspiration for some time, but the 2021 elections made the urgency clearer to us than ever.
Between us, we were fielding all manner of enquiries about the local electoral system, about the best political party candidates for election, and the most rational methods for making voting decisions about who to support at the local government level.
The experience reinforced for both of us the reality that young people’s so-called “apathy” about voting is actually a problem on two fronts: there is a profound deficit in quality, accessible, comprehensible civic education in SA; and there is a deficit of viable options for election to high office, so much so that young people either feel no passion for any of the options on the ballot and make their choices grudgingly, or simply don’t register to vote.
Thankfully, our many interactions as unofficial political advisers to friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances and strangers alike meant that the prospective civic education curriculum had already begun writing itself.
Later this month, Mbete will begin filming Futurelect’s first batch of online civics microcourses. The working title for the first course is “So you think that you elected the president of SA? Let us tell you why you’re wrong”.
We never cease to be amazed by how few people — even registered voters — know we have no direct presidential electoral system in SA. On the occasions we’ve had to explain this to someone, their response has invariably been: “But Cyril Ramaphosa’s picture was on the ballot. I voted for him.” Indeed, it is astonishing how effective this subtle bit of misdirection is; many voters believe they are electing the individual as opposed to just the political party.
We often talk of how, almost 30 years into our political freedom, SA is moving into the “mature” stage of democracy, and what this will or indeed should look like if this maturation process is successful. Some analysts have contended we will be an established democracy once the ANC loses power at the national level for the fist time. Others suggest the emergence of that great messiah, the “political alternative”, is what will usher in the next stage of our democratic dispensation.
My view is that our democracy will only really have matured once the people of SA take active responsibility for it — both at the ballot box and between elections.
Any robust programme of civic education in SA has to take into account the many statutory and official avenues for voter and citizen participation in democratic decision-making between elections. This is what ours is intended to do.
SA is unique among the democracies around the world not only for its progressive constitution, but also because we are fundamentally designed to be a participatory democracy. Governance by the people does not begin and end at the ballot box; we also have statutory instruments designed to enable people’s participation in governance between elections.
These range from citizen participation in budget processes at local level through the ward committee system, to community policing forums or CPFs — first introduced in 1993 as part of the interim constitution to enable communities to oversee and support the SAPS in identifying policing priorities in neighbourhoods.
“Active citizenship” is not just a buzzword. It’ sa set of concrete tools and structures that enables voters to not only elect leaders, but walk with them throughout their five years in office, to ensure effective delivery and accountability. Citizenship is a gamut, running from voting on the one end, to active engagement through the middle, to standing as a political candidate at the other end. A robust system of civic education is one of the many ways we can empower people — women and young people in particular — to take up this critical mantle of leadership.
Civic education in SA is a part of our efforts at Futurelect to support both the political candidates of the future and the people who will elect them. We want to provide South Africans with the information and tools necessary to be able to participate actively in elections and to demand accountability from their elected leaders.
The full development of our democracy will not be handed to us on a platter; we do not get to be passive participants in the project that is SA. Instead, it is up to us to ensure we keep honest the people we elect to high office to serve the people, and when they fail to live up to their commitments we are present, informed and ready to mete out the consequences accordingly.