Cape Town – While many young South Africans took to social media on Wednesday to “check in” their voting activities on Facebook or post a #ivoted selfie on Twitter, some student activists have decided to abstain from participating in the 2016 local government elections.
Junior lecturer Ziyana Lategan said that local government could only serve to administer “racist capitalist inequality by serving white wards, and generally underserving black ones”.
She explained: “South Africa is governed by a constitutional supremacy not by Parliament, as was the case prior to the negotiated settlement”.
“I believe this to have been done in order to protect the massive profits and property of the settler (white) population which they have amassed through the super exploitation of the indigenous population,” said Lategan.
According to the young academic who had in 2014 written for the Mail & Guardian about breaking her “voting virginity”, the lauded South African Constitution had been imposed on the population, as a result of the negotiated settlement during the transition. This, said Lategan, in order “to secure an unequal and unjust distribution of wealth and land”.
“I have chosen to boycott any participation in the processes of formal liberal democracy on this basis,” she said.
“I will boycott up until such time that direct democracy allows for a complete restructuring of the country in favour of the indigenous population against colonial and imperial exploitation, and when black people decide to correct centuries of colonial historic injustice.”
Echoing similar sentiments was Brian Kamanzi, who has been integral to the Rhodes Must Fall movement as well as Cape Town’s interpretations of Fees Must Fall and Outsourcing Must Fall movements. He expressed both practical and ideological reasons for abstaining.
As he is not originally from Cape Town, is a student and not a homeowner, 25-year-old Kamanzi said moving around frequently means he has been unable to familiarise himself with local candidates or form any lasting connection to an area.
On a more ideological level, Kamanzi said that what people were fighting for had shifted from a fight for political and civil rights to the “economic question”.
Kamanzi said instead of buying into this “popular sentiment” of casting a vote, he was choosing to exercise his political freedoms by continuing to assist in organising students and workers around issues such as outsourcing and free education.
Despite his clear position on abstaining, Kamanzi said that he could have been persuaded to vote had their been more independent candidates or representatives from the United Front, a movement set up by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA and supported by former trade union leader Zwelinzima Vavi.
One of Kamanzi’s “Fall” colleagues, 20-year-old Simon Rakei, also chose to abstain for ideological reasons.
Rakei, a financial accounting student at the University of Cape Town, had voted in the 2014 elections.
“At that time, I had bought into the idea that I could [cast] a strategic vote and there was the rise of the EFF who had a very strong youth appeal,” he said.
However, with his involvement with the Fall movements, Rakei said a shift occurred and it became difficult for him to reconcile politics on the ground with democratic notions.
“As young people, there are more meaningful ways to bring about change,” he said.
An example of this, said Rakei, was the type of engagement seen through the Fall movements. This, he said, was better able to bridge gaps and provided greater political participation for young people.
As for abstaining and the risk of unwanted parties claiming victories, Rakei said this could be to their advantage because if conditions under a political party remained the same or worsened, citizens would begin to realise they could take matters into their own hands.
African News Agency