Electorate’s key role in 2024: Rethinking politics amid global challenges

The 2024 election is a defining political moment in SA, but the long-term consequences can only be determined by the electorate.

Rising economic inequalities, exacerbated by a regressive economy, has accelerated declining levels of social cohesion.

This continues to be propelled by diverging and sometimes hostile ideological interparty interests. At times, these interest-driven clashes highlight hidden elite power plays.

At others, they are a genuine attempt to redress core issues that affect South Africans. The power plays and dynamics have contributed to a rapidly changing political landscape.

SA also faces the challenge of navigating a foreign policy that’s subject to shifting geopolitics with the potential to affect our economy, international political relations and aspirations in an emerging multipolar world.

READ: Coalitions: Stop petty politics and put South Africa first

I believe the polls will be the most significant since 1994, because of the demand they place on a “disengaged electorate”.

The post-2024 political landscape demands a sustained engagement that will serve as a check-and-balance mechanism in power, accountability, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and service delivery.

The electorate will have to dislodge itself from politically driven ideological rhetoric that’s divorced from structural and material conditions.

It will also be a mistake to continue to overstate SA’s “exceptionalism card”, as it has proved insufficient in responding to economic inequalities and socio-political challenges.

The electorate must urgently seek to revive political education in communities through debate beyond the confines of protest culture.

Policy must be brought back to the centre of political engagement and contestation.

This has the potential to challenge abstract, unrealistic and unattainable politically charged statements and/or ideologies that have dominated the political debate until now.