Youth’s lack of participation in voting ‘a threat to democracy’

With South Africa’s increasingly young population and the likelihood of having first-, second- and third-time voters in the 2024 elections, the youth’s lack of the participation in voting is a threat to democracy, experts say.

Next year there are national elections in SA, but the youth – estimated at 14 million – seem to be not bothered about registering to vote.

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Independent election analyst Wayne Sussman said if young people do not vote, it was almost guaranteed that the country would once again record low voter turnout. This not only raised questions about the integrity of the election, but undermined it.

Incentives

“We need to see initiatives to get young people to vote succeed because it’s important that they participate.

“We are increasingly becoming a young population in South Africa, with a great proportion of the population being under 30 years,” he said.

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“In this election, there will be a lot of first-time voters who still need to register and show up to vote. What we do not need to see in South Africa is people giving up hope.”

He said to encourage young people to be interested in voting, political parties have to consider having young people lead their movements.

“For example, in the ANC national executive committee there was a huge fight about young people being elected,” Sussman said.

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“We have the Economic Freedom Fighters which continues to attract young people. If political parties want to appeal to young people, they need to field exciting, youthful candidates to energise young people to say ‘these people speak my language’.”

People disengaged from voting

Political analyst Dr Ntsikelelo Breakfast said that when there is a huge chunk of people disengaged from voting, it begged the question whether SA’s democracy was credible.

“It’s a threat to democracy when there is that void [of young people not participating in voting]. Lack of participation allows corruption to flourish.”

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Breakfast said among the reasons young people were not interested in voting was because of the huge unemployment rate among the youth.

“A lot of young people bear the brunt of unemployment. Unemployment is at about 32% and it is worse among the youth,” Breakfast said

“The question for them is: why should I participate in democracy when the powers that be are turning a blind eye to my plight.

“Other young people think the struggle is over and are more interested in things like entertainment, as opposed to politics.

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“The way to bridge this gap is to make sure services are delivered to communities – and that’s the only way.

“Political education will not be enough in terms of encouraging people to show up during the elections.

Voter turnout and development

“There’s a connection between lower voter turnout and development. When lower voter turnout happens, it shows there’s a slow pace of service delivery. The recent local government elections recorded the worst turnout. That is largely because of the slow pace of service delivery.”

Breakfast added that the Electoral Commission of South Africa has not engaged with communities in terms of education about the importance of public participation in elections.

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“They can do that to a certain extent because they are not responsible for rendering services. That’s the responsibility of the powers that be.”

– lungam@citizen.co.za