Cape Town - Voter apathy among the youth is the clearest indication that the freedom promised in 1994 holds little value for them today.
According to Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) statistics, the number of young people who have registered to vote has dropped drastically by almost half from the 2014 general elections.
Registration statistics as at April 23 indicate that the number of 18 to 19 year old voters went down from 646313 in the 2014 general elections to 347990; and 20 to 29 year olds from 5759236 to 5315241. This translates to a 47% drop in voters between the ages of 18 and 19 and a 9% drop in voters between the ages 20-29.
With Freedom Day celebrated on Saturday, senior director on social impact and transformation at Stellenbosch University, Dr Leslie van Rooi, said this drop is extremely alarming.
“This is a clear sign that young people do not feel that they can make a difference through participating in elections and that they are not fully part of general democratic practices,” he said.
“It should also be read as a sign that young people might have decided to make use of other avenues to influence their own future possibilities. ”
The IEC also noted that out of the 9.8 million eligible voters in SA who did not register to vote in the upcoming elections, more than 60% are between the ages of 18-29. Reasons for this drop are still unknown.
Tabile Dlamini, deputy secretary in the Western Cape of the SA Students’ Congress and a University of Cape Town SRC member, said everyone thought that post-1994 South Africa would be free, but that has proven not to be the case. For Dlamini, the youth in South Africa is not yet free.
“We were just given a small piece of the pie,” she said .
“I do not believe that we are free when quality education is not accessible to everyone, when there are still societal barriers driven by cultural and religious beliefs that undermine children and women, when the number of unemployed youth is rising every day.”
Dlamini believes the drop in the number of youth registered to vote is a “clear indication that the youth has lost faith in the government”. Making reference to the #FeesMustFall protest, she said education has become a commodity and privilege accessible to those who have money.
Khethani Boniswa, a community youth activist from Khayelitsha, agreed and said young people resort to alcohol and drug abuse because of a lack of job opportunities.
“Also, being unable to further studies because of financial constraints, and economy fluctuations that worsen poverty, are also some of the challenges facing today’s youth,” he said.
Boniswa believes it is better to only commemorate Freedom Day rather than celebrating it. However, Dlamini said: “This day is important because it marks the day when the country was freed from the chains.
"How we ensure that we achieve total freedom depends on us.”
Van Rooi said young people have different understandings of the concepts of freedom and democracy.
“We should all be concerned about skew interpretations of terms like freedom and democracy specifically in the context of a growing sense of populism. But, given our current social, economic and political realities, it is difficult to foster understandings that remind us of our past, our road to freedom and democracy and the possibility of a better life for all.”