Gugu Resha is the Machel-Mandela Fellow at The Brenthurst Foundation.

In South Africa, Covid-19 introduced a new set of challenges to already strained public finances, the health system and the political landscape. As South Africans conclude the voter registrations for the local elections in November, it would be expected that most citizens would be enthusiastically preparing to hold their leaders accountable for the poor decisions that we saw during the pandemic.

South Africans voters have been steadily declining over six elections, and if one looks at the trend, as demonstrated by democracy expert Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, in The South African non-voter: An analysis, it is clear this will be no exception. More than 13 million eligible voters (out of over 40 million) have not registered to vote, which is one in three people. Based on previous trends, even fewer than those who have registered actually turn up to the polls.

To unpack this troubling lack of interest in political participation it is worth reflecting on some of the major events from the past year that have influenced the current democratic climate in the country; particularly, the pandemic’s impact on democratic resilience, as seen through interest in the upcoming local government elections.

Military policing and brutality, corruption, social unrest

The first “hard” lockdown in 2020 kicked off with what appeared to be a decisive, carefully planned start. The restriction levels were quickly published and the South African Police Service (SAPS) and South African National Defence Force (SANDF) were deployed to enforce compliance in various neighbourhoods — although mostly in the inner city and townships of Johannesburg. When stories surfaced about military and police brutality, the façade of a public safety mandate dissipated and the ugly apartheid-style of control by excessive force emerged.

The killing of Collins Khosa by SANDF members, while he was eating a meal in his yard, instilled fear and resentment at the government for allowing such a gross injustice to happen when people were already rendered vulnerable by the pandemic’s many challenges. By April 2020, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) reported that “the enforcement of lockdown regulations [had] resulted in 38 reported incidents against the police, ranging from murder, assault and rape”.

In February this year, the SAPS was involved in other inhumane acts in which police sprayed a water cannon at a crowd of social grant beneficiaries, including the elderly and persons with disabilities, outside the South African Social Security Agency offices in Bellville, Cape Town.

The prevalence of corruption during the pandemic in the form of misappropriated relief and personal protective equipment funds in scandals involving politicians, public servants and emerging criminals added further insult to the injury. The president’s maladroit “step-aside policy” for African National Congress (ANC) party members with pending criminal charges was a well-intended, but weak attempt to reassure the public of his commitment to root out corruption.

More worryingly, Afrobarometer’s recent study findings showed that not only do South Africans believe that corruption is getting worse during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s tenure, but they also see large portions of elected officials and civil servants as involved in corrupt activities; furthermore, society says the government is handling the anti-corruption fight badly.

Instead of reassuring the public, the ANC created confusion about what stepping aside meant and did not seem to offer any serious framework for the accountability that the public was demanding. Instead of seeing a decline in corruption incidents, in June the health minister was revealed to have profited from irregularly awarded Covid-related contracts; in July the Auditor-General’s report on the 2019-2020 municipal audit outcomes showed that only 27 municipalities out of 257 countrywide received clean audits; in August investigative journalists unveiled intricate webs of illicit funding that found its way into prominent Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leaders’ pockets; and in September when it was time to register to vote, millions of South Africans were too numb from the continuous onslaught of political manipulation and greed while they are left to fend for themselves.

The exposés by the media, civil society, the Auditor-General and the Special Investigating Unit keep streaming in.

Three months ago South Africa was rocked by violent protests and looting, which destabilised critical economic infrastructure, to force the release of then-arrested former president, Jacob Zuma. The protests were co-opted by others who joined out of economic frustrations and opportunism.

Simultaneously, violent exchanges were developing elsewhere in the country, including the taxi wars in the Western Cape and the Phoenix massacre in KwaZulu-Natal in which commuters and workers were caught in the crossfire of dangerous vigilantes and taxi associations. This wave of violent outbreaks again revealed the failure of the SAPS to protect citizens and enforce law and order — while others saw these events as an indication of the failure of the ANC to address long-standing racial injustices and the worsening economic conditions under Covid-19.

Messy vaccination roll-out, poor delivery of relief grants

The vaccine roll-out has been notoriously slow and further compromised by widespread misinformation and inequalities that have hampered delivery. On the one hand, there is the challenge of equitably distributing vaccines across the country, especially to rural areas whose health centres tend to be understaffed and under-resourced. On the other is the mismanagement of relief grants to support those affected by loss of income and livelihoods.

In some corners, those who are anti-vaccines and hesitant, the poor delivery of the Covid-19 relief grants and widespread corruption scandals are noted as reasons for mistrust towards politicians promoting vaccines. The most urgent needs are jobs and an affordable cost of living, and without seeing the promise of an economic recovery on the horizon, those with less information about vaccines see them as futile in addressing their real challenges.

Impact on democratic resilience: institutions, processes, participation

Against this very grim picture of the past couple of months, there were some beacons of light. The Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture continued, including testimony from Ramaphosa — a feat of the judicial mandate to investigate the deep corruption in the state’s institutions. Additionally, the Constitutional Court dismissed an application to postpone the local government elections, thus upholding the integrity of democratic processes and the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC’s) mandate as a key democratic institution.

Civil society groups such as the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution and the Forum 4 Service Delivery provided rigorous public opposition to the application in defence of the constitutional complications that a postponement would create.

Another silver lining is that the IEC reported that the biggest group of registrations was young people, who have historically been the least represented in voting. Perhaps there is a deeper shift in who is losing interest and why.

Given the roller coaster of 2020-2021 for the country’s political (and economic) woes, it is safe to say that these events have not left South Africans unscathed. As the local government elections approach, one would expect most to see it as the perfect opportunity to express these grievances and aspirations through the ballot, and yet we see the persistent trend of waning buy-in and disillusionment in democratic participation.

What this means for the future

Local governments (districts, metropolitans, and municipalities) are some of the biggest sites of mismanagement and are the key implementers of service delivery for water, electricity, refuse removal and public safety. These are prominent concerns for South Africans, as we have witnessed through frequent service delivery protests. The fact that nine voter registration sites were closed on registration Sunday because of service delivery protests is a tragic irony that sums up the future of political participation if urgent changes are not made.

The management of the pandemic and the existing social and political challenges have compounded the mistrust and frustrations that many people have in our institutions. Frankly, this is a loss we could do without since economic recovery rests on these institutions’ ability to inspire confidence from South Africans and the international community. Political leaders need to be held accountable by the public mandate of those who elect them and when fewer citizens participate in these processes we are unlikely to end up with the best people for the job.

We can expect candidates’ campaigns to focus on anti-corruption, service delivery and job creation. Given the increasing poor public opinion of the incumbent leaders and institutions, negative campaigning (rallying support based on what the ANC is not doing) is a traditionally low-hanging fruit that just might not cut it any more. Perhaps the introduction of independent candidates will bear promise for the non-partisan optimists.

While we reflect on the dismal numbers of registered voters for the local elections it is important to consider what these numbers signify. We must, as a nation, reflect on the significance of democratic participation and interrogate the features of the status quo that cause many eligible voters to opt out.

We must resist the temptation of simplistic views that democracy is an abstract concept that some people grasp while others do not. Democracy is the sum of our institutions, processes and values, and when these continually fail the majority of a country’s citizens, withdrawal from participation reflects a lack of trust in the democracy.

The series of assaults on our institutions has created deep scars which may take years to heal, but the urgent questions of economic recovery and job creation, and who will lead these, still stand. It matters who is in local public office and opting out of making this decision will not improve the current state of affairs. DM