The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has scheduled the weekend of June 20-21 for voter registration for the local government elections.
It will conduct door-to-door targeted communication and registration outreach “to maximise registration opportunities closer to where voters reside” and “to facilitate access to franchise and broaden electoral participation”.
Whether this effort will positively change the attitude and behaviour of many citizens who do not bother to vote remains to be seen, as recent research data indicates that 42% of nearly 28-million registered voters did not vote in the last elections.
The commission has acknowledged that “this election has to happen between November 2026 and January 2027” and that “it is not an optimal time to have an election because of the holidays and exams”.
Factors under sharp consideration to improve voter turnout on election day include the weather forecasts and matric examinations.
Also, 47% of young people were not interested in voting in the May 2024 national and provincial elections due to perceptions that their individual vote would not make any difference in the election outcomes.
However, 53% of young people still believed in the importance of voting, as a duty of citizens.
You can call it apathy, disconnection, disempowerment or marginalisation, but an alarming gulf separates the people notionally represented in legislative bodies from the elected representatives who sit there.
In 2026, enjoying freedom means different things to different people in different ways, as we project life into the 2030s and beyond, hence the importance of encouraging active citizen participation in elections, not only as voters but also as candidates
There are myriad theories regarding the causes, ranging from crime, corruption and maladministration to the narrow socioeconomic background of politicians in whom voters put their trust over the years.
What is beyond argument, though, is that there can be no prospect of restoring the missing link between the governed and the governing.
Meanwhile, a significant proportion of citizens are unable to participate fully in the political or socioeconomic life to which they are entitled.
In 2026, enjoying freedom means different things to different people in different ways, as we project life into the 2030s and beyond, hence the importance of encouraging active citizen participation in elections, not only as voters but also as candidates.
The founding values of the constitution include universal adult suffrage, a national common voters’ roll and a multi-party system of democratic government to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness.
Insofar as local government elections have a territorial component — where candidates are in the first instance elected to represent particular wards — the commission must register voters to ensure that only voters in that particular area are registered and permitted to vote.
The desired outcome of this June wave of voter registration is that the prospective first-time voters cohort — whose youths were thrown into upheaval by poverty, hunger, inequality, unemployment, crime, corruption abuse and neglect, an HIV epidemic and the Covid-19 pandemic — will register to vote, vote in large numbers, and move on to adopt a set of sociopolitical assumptions that form a new sort of ideology that does not quite have a name yet.
The missing 42% of nearly 28-million registered voters who did not vote in the last elections has been growing since 2014.
Under the triple scourge of poverty, unemployment and inequality where many face challenges in affording daily living costs, citizens on the voters’ roll continue to be displaced and unable to vote where they registered, hence the importance of this voter registration drive.
Many never returned. The reach of the roll shrivelled further due to the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and the exposure of state capture corruption.
The IEC has announced that the total number of registered political parties in SA now stands at 508, after the registration of 20 new parties between October and February.
Of these, 299 are registered at the national level, while 209 are registered at the provincial, district or metropolitan levels.
This means that the choice between the parties had come to seem bigger, and even those on the register become less inclined to help ensure a high voter turnout because they believe that might favour dominant parties.
Harder times, however, produce harsher choices, giving elections a sharper edge than they have had for a while.
Many of the young and unemployed, the non-property-owning and the peripatetic — all categories qualifying for door-to-door targeted communication and registration outreach — will also bear the brunt of decades of political decisions that have made life miserable.
They may wish to have their democratic say, but they will not be able to do so unless they have registered to vote where they ordinarily reside.
There are pressing reasons for all stakeholders to collaborate to boost these numbers
The Electoral Act requires the chief electoral officer to register voters in the voting district in which they are ordinarily resident.
That ensures that, when the segment of the national voters’ roll to be used in the conduct of an election or a by-election in a particular ward is prepared, it will include only voters qualified to vote in that ward.
And it is as important to ensure that those who are not qualified to vote are excluded,as it is to enable those who are qualified to vote to do so.
The IEC recorded more than 260,000 new registrations between November and March.
Of these 132,000 were via the online self-registration platform and 128,000 were through the voter management devices (VMDs).
There are pressing reasons for all stakeholders to collaborate to boost these numbers.
It is already a scandal that millions of young people were not interested in voting in the May 2024 national and provincial elections, due to perceptions that their individual vote would not make any difference in the election outcomes.
The overdue shift from these anachronistic systems and practices that prevent citizens from registering and voting must cease and all stakeholders must implement innovative administrative processes to facilitate voter participation.
The democratic principle demands that every last name is on the voters’ roll, and no stakeholder must seem intensely relaxed from the start.
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