A democracy is a political or decision-making system within an institution, organisation, or state in which its members have a share in power. The word democracy is derived from the Greek word demokratia which is a combination of two words, demos meaning people and kratia meaning power. Cleisthenes is often credited as the founding father of democracy, where its inception was in Athens, Greece in the late 6th century BCE. Greece’s version of democracy, however, was limited, given that only free adult males who completed military service and ordinary citizens chosen through a lottery system could vote. Women, slaves and foreign residents could not vote.
Fast forward to 20th century South Africa when the British Parliament passed the South Africa Act in 1909¹ which combined the self-governing colonies, namely Natal, Cape, Transvaal and Orange Freestate [it is worth noting that the Union was opposed by the South African Native National Convention, later renamed the African National Congress. Their appeals were ignored by the British government]. This act, which served as the Union’s constitution until 1961, had the government set up along the lines of the Westminster Model – a directly elected House of Assembly and an indirectly elected Senate. South Africa then had its first elections in 1910, which were won by the South African Party. This practice of democracy was also an incomplete one.
The permission to vote was largely granted to white men. The Orange Freestate and the Transvaal denied all Blacks the right to vote outright while Natal denied nearly all Blacks. In the Cape, some Black and coloured men could vote due to “color-blind” permissions based on the ownership of property. The permission mattered little however because only white men could be elected to Parliament. The elections in 1929 were the last white-male-only elections because in 1930, white women allowed to vote, lobbied got by the Women’s Enfranchisement Association of the Union (WEAU). This expansion is not without irony because while the white South African population gained entry into the democratic system, Black South Africans remained excluded from meaningful political power. In fact, only six years later, Parliament passed the Representation of Natives Act which removed Black voters in the Cape from the common voters’ roll, effectively ending their ability to participate in elections on the same basis as white and Coloured voters. Black voters were given a separate and severely limited system of representation, which again could only be white men. The significance of 1936 was that not only did Black South Africans lose a vote but also the South African state was beginning to formalise a hierarchy of ploticial citizenship, where white people could participate directly in the determining the government that ruled the country while Black South Africans were increasingly expected to exercise their rights through separate representatives who were jot accountable to a Black electorate.
The Nation Party sought to accelerate the process when it came into power in 1948 and continued to separate political rights along racial lines. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 and the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 both worked to establish and then divide Black South Africans into separate ethnic “national units” and provided for the development of self-governing territories. The underlying logic was rather than allowing Black South Africans to actively participate in determining the government of South Africa as a whole, apartheid sought to confine their political rights to territories created and controlled by the state. Its most extreme form was the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 which stripped Black South Africans of their citizenship and forced them to become citizens of of designated homelands or Bantustans. During the 80s, the Apartheid government tried to further this agenda when the 1983 Constitution established a Tricameral Parliament containing separate chambers for white, Coloured and Indian South Africans, excluding Black South Africans entirely, on the basis that they were supposedly citizens of the homelands.
Respite came in the form of the 1992 South African Apartheid referendum which dismantled the apartheid system, and the formal and complete end to minority came during the first democratic elections held in 1994. For generations in South Africa the question wasn’t whether or not people would vote, rather who was permitted to vote. Thirty two years after that question is answered South Africa faces a different problem: not exclusion from the ballet but a withdrawal from it.
Voter apathy is characterised by the lack of interest in participating in elections by certain groups of voters. A symptom of voter apathy is a low voter turnout in non-compulsory elections. The voter turnout in the 1994 elections was 86.9% while the turnout for our most recent elections was 58.6%. Our last local elections, held in 2021, had a voter turnout of only 45.8%. Turnout aside, young people are simply not registering to vote either. In 2024, and estimated 27% of the population aged 18-19, and 49% of those aged 20-29 were registered to vote, compared to around 80% of those in their 40s or older. Even as we are confronted by these low numbers, 63% of Gen Z still regard voting a civic duty and 58% of them believe it to be important. The lack of want to vote may come from a myriad of reasons but for the majority of young voters, not caring for democracy is not one of them. Voters’ grievances, and their reasons for abstinence come from feelings of disillusionment, their declining trust in the institutions, dissatisfaction in service delivery, economic instability and a lack of political alignment. Young people haven’t stopped believing in democracy, instead there is a chasm between “I believe democracy matters” and “I believe participating in democracy will change anything”. We think there is no real agency in our vote because nothing ever happens anyway.
The irony is that voting is agency. Democracy doesn’t promise that voting will guarantee the exact future you want in the exact way you want it, it promises that you get a hand in determining it. This is especially true for local
elections. During local elections you vote for the people who govern the minucipality responsible for your water, sanitation, electricity, refuse collection, roads, local infrastructure, public spaces, municipal planning and economic development. Local elections are arguably the most tangible form of participation through democracy. At least at a micro level, the ballot box for local elections is heavier. In a national election, the consequence of your vote can feel distant whereas in a local election, they arrive at your doorstep.
Calling it apathy may be a cop out. Sometimes, as it was in my case, not voting is the political statement. It is an expression of rejection – rejection of the political parties, political institutions, the choices presented on the ballot, or the belief that those can meaningfully alter the conditions in which people live. For me, and other young South Africans like myself, the decision to not vote was less a surrender and more a refusal. If none of the available candidates seem capable of acting on their promises why should I lend them my vote? When the ballot seems to offer no option that resembles a viable future, abstaining can feel like the only honest answer. But seeing how politically active my peers presented me with an uncomfortable question: what does abstention actually change? South Africa spent most of the 20th century constructing an entire political system around the proposition that Black people could not be full political citizens. The denial of voter rights by the state was a denial of citizenship, equality, adulthood and sovereignty against colonial claims of mechanised self-determination. Scores of Black people laid their lives down for a fair shot at the ballot. They fought to enter the room and due to a lack of service delivery we have convinced ourselves the room was not worth entering to begin with. So I ask you, as I’ve asked myself, does leaving the room give us a greater ability to change what is inside the room?. Does withdrawal from the system give us more or less power?
Refusing to choose between the available options does not conjure the perfect candidate. It does not change the composition of a municipality or alter who will be responsible for governing it. The election proceeds regardless. Other people vote, the votes are counted, and someone assumes the responsibility of making decisions on behalf of the people who participated and those who did not. This does not make the reasons for abstention illegitimate. In fact, understanding those reasons is essential to understanding South Africa’s declining electoral participation. But there is a difference between rejecting the political system and relinquishing one’s influence over its outcome. The danger is that political disillusionment can become political powerlessness. The thought that “my vote won’t change anything” can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: the fewer people who participate, the fewer people there are determining who exercises political power. In that sense, withdrawal does not necessarily punish the political system. Sometimes it simply leaves the system with fewer voices to account for.
For generations, Black South Africans were told they were not entitled to participate in deciding what their country would become and for generations they fought that exclusion. In 1994, that fight ended in victory and the ballot was placed in the hands of everyone. Thirty two years later our problem no longer is that we are being kept from the ballot box, rather that too many of us have convinced ourselves that nothing is worth doing once we get there. However, dreaming of a different South Africa requires more than just imagining one because a dream asks something of the person who dreams it. It asks us to participate in making it real. Voting on its own will not build the South Africa we dream of, but it is an admission that the future is not predetermined; it is still contested, still changeable and still partly ours to shape. The people who came before us fought tooth and nail for the right to enter the room. The
least we can do is walk through the door.
X Marks the Spot
A democracy is a political or decision-making system within an institution, organisation, or state in which its members have a share in power. The word democracy is derived from the Greek word demokratia which is a combination of two words, demos meaning people and kratia meaning power. Cleisthenes is often credited as the founding father of democracy, where its inception was in Athens, Greece in the late 6th century BCE. Greece’s version of democracy, however, was limited, given that only free adult males who completed military service and ordinary citizens chosen through a lottery system could vote. Women, slaves and foreign residents could not vote.
Fast forward to 20th century South Africa when the British Parliament passed the South Africa Act in 1909¹ which combined the self-governing colonies, namely Natal, Cape, Transvaal and Orange Freestate [it is worth noting that the Union was opposed by the South African Native National Convention, later renamed the African National Congress. Their appeals were ignored by the British government]. This act, which served as the Union’s constitution until 1961, had the government set up along the lines of the Westminster Model – a directly elected House of Assembly and an indirectly elected Senate. South Africa then had its first elections in 1910, which were won by the South African Party. This practice of democracy was also an incomplete one.
The permission to vote was largely granted to white men. The Orange Freestate and the Transvaal denied all Blacks the right to vote outright while Natal denied nearly all Blacks. In the Cape, some Black and coloured men could vote due to “color-blind” permissions based on the ownership of property. The permission mattered little however because only white men could be elected to Parliament. The elections in 1929 were the last white-male-only elections because in 1930, white women allowed to vote, lobbied got by the Women’s Enfranchisement Association of the Union (WEAU). This expansion is not without irony because while the white South African population gained entry into the democratic system, Black South Africans remained excluded from meaningful political power. In fact, only six years later, Parliament passed the Representation of Natives Act which removed Black voters in the Cape from the common voters’ roll, effectively ending their ability to participate in elections on the same basis as white and Coloured voters. Black voters were given a separate and severely limited system of representation, which again could only be white men. The significance of 1936 was that not only did Black South Africans lose a vote but also the South African state was beginning to formalise a hierarchy of ploticial citizenship, where white people could participate directly in the determining the government that ruled the country while Black South Africans were increasingly expected to exercise their rights through separate representatives who were jot accountable to a Black electorate.
The Nation Party sought to accelerate the process when it came into power in 1948 and continued to separate political rights along racial lines. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 and the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 both worked to establish and then divide Black South Africans into separate ethnic “national units” and provided for the development of self-governing territories. The underlying logic was rather than allowing Black South Africans to actively participate in determining the government of South Africa as a whole, apartheid sought to confine their political rights to territories created and controlled by the state. Its most extreme form was the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 which stripped Black South Africans of their citizenship and forced them to become citizens of of designated homelands or Bantustans. During the 80s, the Apartheid government tried to further this agenda when the 1983 Constitution established a Tricameral Parliament containing separate chambers for white, Coloured and Indian South Africans, excluding Black South Africans entirely, on the basis that they were supposedly citizens of the homelands.
Respite came in the form of the 1992 South African Apartheid referendum which dismantled the apartheid system, and the formal and complete end to minority came during the first democratic elections held in 1994. For generations in South Africa the question wasn’t whether or not people would vote, rather who was permitted to vote. Thirty two years after that question is answered South Africa faces a different problem: not exclusion from the ballet but a withdrawal from it.
Voter apathy is characterised by the lack of interest in participating in elections by certain groups of voters. A symptom of voter apathy is a low voter turnout in non-compulsory elections. The voter turnout in the 1994 elections was 86.9% while the turnout for our most recent elections was 58.6%. Our last local elections, held in 2021, had a voter turnout of only 45.8%. Turnout aside, young people are simply not registering to vote either. In 2024, and estimated 27% of the population aged 18-19, and 49% of those aged 20-29 were registered to vote, compared to around 80% of those in their 40s or older. Even as we are confronted by these low numbers, 63% of Gen Z still regard voting a civic duty and 58% of them believe it to be important. The lack of want to vote may come from a myriad of reasons but for the majority of young voters, not caring for democracy is not one of them. Voters’ grievances, and their reasons for abstinence come from feelings of disillusionment, their declining trust in the institutions, dissatisfaction in service delivery, economic instability and a lack of political alignment. Young people haven’t stopped believing in democracy, instead there is a chasm between “I believe democracy matters” and “I believe participating in democracy will change anything”. We think there is no real agency in our vote because nothing ever happens anyway.
The irony is that voting is agency. Democracy doesn’t promise that voting will guarantee the exact future you want in the exact way you want it, it promises that you get a hand in determining it. This is especially true for local
elections. During local elections you vote for the people who govern the minucipality responsible for your water, sanitation, electricity, refuse collection, roads, local infrastructure, public spaces, municipal planning and economic development. Local elections are arguably the most tangible form of participation through democracy. At least at a micro level, the ballot box for local elections is heavier. In a national election, the consequence of your vote can feel distant whereas in a local election, they arrive at your doorstep.
Calling it apathy may be a cop out. Sometimes, as it was in my case, not voting is the political statement. It is an expression of rejection – rejection of the political parties, political institutions, the choices presented on the ballot, or the belief that those can meaningfully alter the conditions in which people live. For me, and other young South Africans like myself, the decision to not vote was less a surrender and more a refusal. If none of the available candidates seem capable of acting on their promises why should I lend them my vote? When the ballot seems to offer no option that resembles a viable future, abstaining can feel like the only honest answer. But seeing how politically active my peers presented me with an uncomfortable question: what does abstention actually change? South Africa spent most of the 20th century constructing an entire political system around the proposition that Black people could not be full political citizens. The denial of voter rights by the state was a denial of citizenship, equality, adulthood and sovereignty against colonial claims of mechanised self-determination. Scores of Black people laid their lives down for a fair shot at the ballot. They fought to enter the room and due to a lack of service delivery we have convinced ourselves the room was not worth entering to begin with. So I ask you, as I’ve asked myself, does leaving the room give us a greater ability to change what is inside the room?. Does withdrawal from the system give us more or less power?
Refusing to choose between the available options does not conjure the perfect candidate. It does not change the composition of a municipality or alter who will be responsible for governing it. The election proceeds regardless. Other people vote, the votes are counted, and someone assumes the responsibility of making decisions on behalf of the people who participated and those who did not. This does not make the reasons for abstention illegitimate. In fact, understanding those reasons is essential to understanding South Africa’s declining electoral participation. But there is a difference between rejecting the political system and relinquishing one’s influence over its outcome. The danger is that political disillusionment can become political powerlessness. The thought that “my vote won’t change anything” can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: the fewer people who participate, the fewer people there are determining who exercises political power. In that sense, withdrawal does not necessarily punish the political system. Sometimes it simply leaves the system with fewer voices to account for.
For generations, Black South Africans were told they were not entitled to participate in deciding what their country would become and for generations they fought that exclusion. In 1994, that fight ended in victory and the ballot was placed in the hands of everyone. Thirty two years later our problem no longer is that we are being kept from the ballot box, rather that too many of us have convinced ourselves that nothing is worth doing once we get there. However, dreaming of a different South Africa requires more than just imagining one because a dream asks something of the person who dreams it. It asks us to participate in making it real. Voting on its own will not build the South Africa we dream of, but it is an admission that the future is not predetermined; it is still contested, still changeable and still partly ours to shape. The people who came before us fought tooth and nail for the right to enter the room. The
least we can do is walk through the door.
Author