#IMadeMyMark: Voting education needed as Pimville youth snub elections
Young people accounted for just 18% of the 26.2 million registered voters in the 2021 Local Government Elections, a far cry from the 43% recorded in the 1999 elections.
The importance of educating young people on voting was highlighted on election day across voting stations in Kliptown, Pimville and Klipspruit, where the elderly overwhelmingly outnumbered the youth.
Young people (18-29) accounted for just 18% of the 26.2 million registered voters in the 2021 Local Government Elections, a far cry from the 43% recorded in the 1999 elections. That was reflected in the turnout in Pimville at the Pimville Primary School where the elderly once again dominated numbers.
Soweto community leader and president of Young People’s Government of South Africa (Youngpgsa), Nhlanhla Lux said that youth and been discouraged from voting.
“Well the big reasons are the youth is disgruntled, the youth don’t have a platform to excessive leadership. The youth are limited in terms of access to the economy.”
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In terms of solutions. Lux said voting education had to be taken to the classroom.
“The education system is at the centre of this divide. If the education system can start prioritising voter education and normalise it in the classroom, we will see a big difference,” he said.
First-time voters 20-year-old Buhle Ruleni and 19-year-old Maya Khoza were among the few young people that turn up and they echoed Lux’s sentiments.
“There definitely is a lack of education around voting. People our age feel like it is not important to vote,” said Ruleni,
While Khoza added: “I feel like young people don’t realise the importance of voting in our country. We don’t realise that we can make our country way better than it is. I came to vote before I feel that my vote could make a difference.”
South Africa’s sharp decline in voting numbers will be a concern for political parties. After all, it was not only the youth who failed to show up. The numbers by elections’ analyst Dawie Scholtz revealed that South Africans had generally had one of the lowest turnouts since the first democratic elections. In the 2016 Local Government Elections, 7.5 million people had voted by noon. In the 2021 local government elections, however, an underwhelming 3.5 million had registered the IEC said.
