The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) and political parties will have an uphill battle in the next local government elections to inspire the electorate to cast their votes due to a prevailing sense of disillusionment with democracy.
There has been a declining trend in voter participation in elections between 2000 (48%) and 2021 (46%), and recent market research by the IEC indicated only 49% of eligible voters indicated an intention to vote if an election were to be held at that time, and their participation would be contingent on a number of factors.
The next local government elections have to be held between November 2 2026 and January 30 2027. Ahead of the announcement of the election date by the minister of co-operative governance & traditional affairs, the IEC has to make preparations for the elections.
“There is an entrenched trend globally of a downward participation in elections. There are headwinds facing democracy as the preferred method of arranging public affairs,” IEC deputy chief electoral commissioner Masego Shiburi told a joint meeting of parliament’s home affairs and co-operative governance & traditional affairs committees.
“Those headwinds are also augmented by the difficult financial circumstances in the last five or 10 years globally and also in the country. So that is the reality. Elections will happen in the context of declining voter participation, which is one of the indicators of the health of a democracy,” Shiburi said.
A worry, he added, is the number of voters (86%) who said they will abstain from voting because they are disillusioned. This compares with 78% who gave this reason in 2021 and 82% in 2018.
There is an entrenched trend globally of a downward participation in elections. There are headwinds facing democracy as the preferred method of arranging public affairs.
— Masego Shiburi, IEC deputy chief electoral commissioner
Of those interviewed, 58% in 2023 said they were dissatisfied with the fruits of democracy, compared with about 25% in 2004. Shiburi warned that if this trend becomes entrenched, it would increase the number of people receptive to forms of autocratic rule or even dictatorships.
“We can’t understate the power of political party campaigns, as the level of dissatisfaction seemed to spike in years outside of elections and decline when parties begin their election campaigns,” he said.
Shiburi noted that trust in national government had plummeted between 2003 and 2023 from 67% to 26% and trust in local government was down from 53% to 25%. In this context there was little motivation to vote.
However, in spite of the disillusionment, 68% of citizens still believe that voting is a civic duty, which Shiburi said offers hope for voting numbers.
A key focus of the IEC ahead of the elections will be to increase the number of registered voters, with special attention being given to incentivising the youth. By November 25, there were 27.7-million registered voters out of a potential 38-million who were eligible to vote. This gap has to be narrowed, Shiburi emphasised. Of the registered voters, 55.2% are female.
Shiburi said more of the population in rural areas was registered, but the percentage dropped markedly in urban areas, with the biggest registration gap being in Gauteng, where only 59% of eligible voters are registered.
IEC CEO Sy Mamabolo told MPs that there were operational challenges in last year’s general election, which have been addressed.
“It is our belief that the amelioration measures that have been put in place will hold such that on election day they will be completely eradicated,” he said.
These challenges included the functionality of the voter registration app. The bug that had created multiple records and prevented people from being verified quickly had been identified and a solution found.
The IEC wants to have the app and its performance tested independently.
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