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Central SA

Why Bfn voters stayed away from the polls

───   09:44 Thu, 04 Nov 2021

Why Bfn voters stayed away from the polls | News Article
Sethulego Matebesi PHOTO: Bloemfontein Courant

During this week’s local government elections, South Africa has seen one of the lowest voter turnouts in the history of its young democracy, and the Mangaung Metro was no exception.

Bloemfontein Courant reports that although queues at some voting stations in Bloemfontein’s more affluent areas indicated that residents of the suburbs still had a reasonable appetite for voting, the turnout in the townships was disheartening, to say the least.

According to experts, this could be attributed to voter apathy brought on by empty promises made to the electorate by politicians during their election campaigns.

Prof. Sethulego Matebesi, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology, University of the Free State (UFS), said he believes there could have been a few reasons for the low turnout for this year’s elections, with the main reason being people’s lack of confidence in the political system. “During every election political parties make promises, but after winning the elections, they forget about the people,” said Matebesi.

He also believes that the day as well as the season the elections is held, is very important. “South Africans are usually not productive on a Monday because they are still tired from the weekend.” He strongly believes no one would willingly use a public day to do something the government wants.

The ANC, the leading party in the Mangaung Metro, seems to agree with Matebesi about the correlation between empty promises and voter apathy. Oupa Khoabane, the Free State ANC’s Interim Provincial Committee spokesperson, said although they are satisfied with how the party fared in the elections, they are not too happy about the low voter turnout.

“However, the ANC sees the apathy as a message from the public that the party’s attitude has to change. This means we will take the message and make the people happy by giving proper service delivery, and delivering on the issues members of the public have been complaining about for a while.”

Werner Horn, Free State provincial chairperson of the Democratic Alliance and the party’s campaign manager, said they had hoped to see the voters vote out the ANC completely, but that was affected by the low voter turnout. “However, early indications would seem to suggest that the ANC’s grip on the Free State has loosened in many instances. The DA will continue to play the role which our voters have entrusted upon us, which is to be a strong robust opposition that holds government accountable,” Horn concluded.

By the time of going to print, the Independent Electoral Commission has only captured 46% of the votes for Mangaung, at which stage the ANC was in the lead with 49.9%, the DA second with 17,96% and the EFF third with 12,09%.


Bloemfontein Courant/Corn Koteli

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