The democratic transition fundamentally transformed SA’s political order without fundamentally transforming the social and economic relations that had produced inequality in the first place.
The constitution established a democratic state founded on human dignity, equality, non-racialism, non-sexism and universal political participation, giving constitutional expression to many of the aspirations articulated in the Freedom Charter.
Yet the promise of equal citizenship came to coexist with an economic order that continued to reproduce profound inequality, unemployment and exclusion.
It is within this unresolved contradiction that many of SA’s contemporary political tensions should be understood.
Much has been said about declining voter participation in SA.
Election after election, concern is raised about falling voter registration, declining turnout and growing political disengagement.
The dominant explanation is usually voter apathy. Yet this diagnosis may be too superficial.
The more important question is not whether people have become less interested in politics, but whether they have become less convinced that existing political institutions are capable of transforming their material conditions.
The statistics are revealing.
While SA’s voting age population continues to grow, a significant proportion of eligible citizens remain outside the electoral process altogether, either by not registering or by choosing not to vote.
This means governments are increasingly elected by a shrinking proportion of the adult population.
Constitutionally, there is nothing illegitimate about this.
Politically, however, it raises profound questions about the relationship between society and the institutions that claim to represent it.
The decline of the ANC should also be understood within this broader context. Its electoral losses have not translated into a proportional expansion of support for alternative political parties.
Instead, millions have withdrawn from formal electoral politics altogether.
This suggests that the crisis extends beyond dissatisfaction with a governing party.
It points towards a broader erosion of confidence in the formal political establishment itself.
Political stability depends on more than constitutional arrangements or periodic elections.
Institutions derive their durability not only from legal authority but also from public confidence that they remain capable of representing society’s aspirations and resolving its most pressing contradictions.
Once that confidence begins to weaken, a gap emerges between society and the state.
Governments continue to govern, elections continue to take place and institutions continue to function, yet growing sections of society no longer recognise those institutions as meaningful vehicles through which their interests can be advanced.
This widening gap helps explain the emergence of issue-based social movements across SA.
Whether organised around unemployment, service delivery, corruption, immigration, land, crime, community safety or identity, these movements reflect attempts by different sections of society to articulate demands that they believe established institutions have failed to address.
Their politics vary considerably, and in many cases, they contradict one another.
Yet collectively, they reveal an increasingly important reality.
Political representation is no longer confined to formal democratic institutions.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that every emerging movement represents democratic renewal.
Periods of declining institutional legitimacy create political space for competing projects.
Some seek to deepen democracy through greater social justice, equality and collective participation.
Others mobilise around exclusion, ethnicity, race, nationality or resentment.
Both emerge from the same structural conditions, yet they propose fundamentally different responses to them.
The struggle is therefore not only over political power, but also over which ideas will come to define society’s understanding of its own crisis.
At the centre of this process lies a contradiction that SA has yet to resolve.
Political equality has been constitutionally guaranteed, yet economic inequality continues to determine the lived experience of millions.
Citizens possess equal voting rights, but vastly unequal access to employment, wealth, land, quality education and economic opportunity.
Formal political rights remain indispensable, but they cannot indefinitely compensate for the absence of material transformation.
As this contradiction deepens, confidence in democratic institutions is likely to continue declining, regardless of which political party occupies public office.
If this diagnosis is correct, then the challenge confronting political organisations is considerably larger than winning elections.
It is to rebuild social legitimacy by reconnecting political activity with the everyday material interests of working people and poor communities.
Electoral campaigns, parliamentary debates and policy documents remain important, but they cannot substitute for sustained political organisation within communities, workplaces, educational institutions and civic life.
Politics cannot exist only during election seasons.
It must once again become a continuous social practice through which ordinary people experience genuine influence over the conditions that shape their lives.
The same challenge extends beyond political parties.
Labour unions, civic organisations, religious institutions, professional associations, community organisations and other democratic formations must equally confront the growing distance between themselves and the constituencies they claim to represent.
Where representative institutions lose their capacity to organise society around shared aspirations, alternative forms of political organisation inevitably emerge to occupy that space.
Perhaps, then, declining voter participation should not be understood simply as evidence of civic disengagement.
It may instead represent the statistical expression of a deeper political transformation.
The question is not merely why fewer South Africans are voting. It is why so many no longer regard formal democratic institutions as the principal means through which their aspirations can be realised.
Until that question is confronted honestly, electoral decline will remain a symptom rather than the crisis itself.
The deeper crisis concerns political legitimacy, social representation and the unresolved contradiction between constitutional democracy and persistent material inequality.
How SA responds to that contradiction will shape not only the future of its democracy, but the character of the political movements that emerge to redefine it.
Mawande Mnqayi, deputy local chair of Cosatu in KuGompo City and ANC member in the WB Rubusana Sicelo Mhlauli branch in ward 25
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