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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe IEC\u2019s push for new voters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In 2016, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) pushed new voters to register to vote in that year’s municipal elections<\/a> (PDF). Its aim was to register 1-million new voters; it registered 1.3-million. Eighty percent of the people who registered for the first time were under 30 years old.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This year, despite spending significant resources<\/a> on encouraging young people to register, new registrations were much lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sy Mamabolo, the IEC’s CEO, said at a media briefing in Septembe<\/a>r <\/a>that 91% of new voter registrations for the elections in November, or 402,401 people, were aged 29 or younger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Covid-19 pandemic, which has dragged on for more than 18 months, may have had something to do with the relatively low new voter registrations, but how much of an effect it has had we probably won’t know for a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not because young people are apathetic about the voting process, noted Institute of Security Studies researcher Lauren Tracey-Temba<\/a> in a 2016 study of what drives young people to vote. She found that if young people feel that political leaders don’t address things that directly affect them, such as youth unemployment, crime and corruption, they are less likely to participate in elections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tracey-Temba spoke to 277 focus groups and conducted 49 one-on-one interviews with 18 to 24-year-olds in all nine provinces between February and July 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYoung people still identify voting as important and as an effective way to bring about change. They do, however, come from a generation that is enticed by action, and not words,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s not just local government elections, young voters aren\u2019t participating in national elections either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The number of people under 30 registering to participate in the national elections has also dropped, according to a 2019 report on South Africa’s non-voters<\/a> by Dr Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, a senior lecturer in Stellenbosch University\u2019s Political Science Department<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA bulging youthful population has produced a significant proportion of young eligible voters. Despite their disproportionately larger numbers in the electorate, young people register (and vote) at far lower rates than their older counterparts,\u201d wrote Schulz-Herzenberg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Her analysis showed that fewer young South Africans under 30-years-old registered to vote in the 2019 national elections (48.6%) compared with the 2014 elections (58%). <\/p>\n\n\n\n This year, 55% of the registered voters are women \u2013 the same proportion as 2016. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u200b\u200bWomen are more interested in political participation than men,\u201d Youth Lab director Pearl Pillay told The Outlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn countries like the US, women vote far more than men do, but because we have framed democracy as a male activity, we see women’s political participation as the exception, rather than the norm,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same holds true for South Africa. For example, in the 2016 municipal elections 58% of the women<\/a> (PDF) who’d registered cast a vote, compared with only 42% of the men.<\/p>\n\n\n\nApathy or something else?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Women vote, where are their voices?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n