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Number of registered voters actually declining in South Africa

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Author:  Nkoe A Montja

The IEC in South Africa has always recorded an increasing number of voter during countrywide registration processes. In economics such an increase is called a “depreciating increase”, whereby one increase is always lower than the previous one.

As expected, this would raise political party expectations coming into the voting outcomes. The end results however is a decreased voter turnout.

This has been a trend since the inception of democracy in 1994, where the register would hint an increase in voters but the outcome proposes a decrease. The depth of this statistics is such that at the end of the day you find that in the history of democracy, South Africa has never registered a voter turnout of over 60%. The highest the country has ever managed to get to the polls after 5 democratic elections today stands at 59%. This only tells us that 59% of the country’s eligible population gets to decide the future of political leadership in the country, mostly being the elderly.

With an increased number of youth eligible but unregistered as voters, the country might find itself with empty voting stations in the next 20 years. It looks as though the youth of the country has no interest in its politics. This is seen by the increasing number of youth eligible to vote not registering to activate their right.

Could this be that the very youth is facing the struggle of their own as compared to the elderly who faced a much more physical and fierce struggle? Or could it be the impact of a high unemployment rate, poverty, corruption or even independence?

Below is a detailed illustration of the country’s depreciating increase in voter registration and turnout.

South African elections have always been faced with service delivery threats. Citizens from different spheres of the country would always vote pending a condition. Today things have reportedly escalated and people in some areas are actually demanding to see representatives before heading to the polls.

Could this lead to another decrease in the voter turnout? The voter registration in percentages is already lower than the previous one and the employers refusing employees the right to vote is another injustice to the country’s democracy.

*Nkoe A Montja is a researcher and analyst at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.

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