Not voting means you leave power in the same incapable hands

Come late 2026, I will have a household of eligible voters – from the old-hand octogenarian to the newly minted 18-year-old.

The election date is yet to be announced, but we have already started to have some lively conversations about voting, and why it’s important to be an active citizen in this space. The apathy towards taking part in the polls is pretty real across the age range. Poor service delivery coupled with corruption creates fertile ground for a disaffected electorate.

But if there is one lesson to take from the political shifts of 2025, it is that the ballot box remains the most potent weapon in a citizen’s arsenal.

Look no further than New York City. In November, Zohran Mamdani (43), a democratic socialist and former housing counsellor, stunned the establishment by winning the mayoral race. He didn’t just beat a Republican, he toppled a political dynasty in defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo.

And he did it not by appealing to the status quo, and certainly not by banking on voter apathy. Mamdani won because he mobilised a coalition of the unheard – taxi drivers, young renters and working-class families – who realised that not voting was simply not an option. He turned a legislative track record of fighting for taxi medallion debt relief and free buses into a mandate for running the biggest city in America.

This is a striking counter-narrative to the mood hanging over South Africa as we stare down the barrel of the 2026 local government elections.

Governance disaster

And nowhere is the cost of apathy more visible than in Johannesburg. Since 2016, the City of Gold has chewed through nine mayors. We’ve gone from Parks Tau to Herman Mashaba, through the death of Jolidee Matongo, the ousting of Mpho Phalatse and into the farcical “coalition chaos” era of Thapelo Amad (who lasted 87 days) and Kabelo Gwamanda.

By the time Dada Morero returned to the mayoral seat in late 2024, Joburg residents had whiplash. This is not political theatre, but a governance disaster with a very real price tag.

Every time a mayor falls, strategy is abandoned, key municipal contracts are potentially delayed, senior management could be purged and long-term infrastructure maintenance plans could be scrapped in favour of others. This is why political instability has a domino effect that has a direct, literal cost in the form of a dry tap, pothole-ribboned roads, darkened streets and uncollected rubbish, for starters.

Here at home, the refrain of “I’m not voting. That will show them”, is becoming tired and dangerous. But let’s be clear. Staying away from the polls doesn’t “show” a politician anything other than that they can ignore you without consequence.

We saw this during the “No Water, No Vote” protests that erupted across the commando system suburbs – from Crosby and Brixton to Coronationville – earlier this year. Although the anger was righteous, the slogan is self-defeating. If you don’t vote, you leave your tap in the hands of the same unstable coalitions that let the reservoirs run dry in the first place.

When you boycott the polls, the bar for victory is lowered. The mayor who wins with 20% turnout is still the mayor. They still control the budget. They still decide whether or not to fix the leak in Sandton and the streetlights in Soweto.

Youth vote

The real battle for 2026 will be the youth vote. The 2024 national election was a wake-up call. Millions of eligible young South Africans didn’t even register to vote.

So the challenge for our political parties in 2026 is monumental. They are trying to sell a ballot paper to a generation that has only known coalition chaos and 40% unemployment. The 1994 nostalgia card has expired. The fightback slogans ring hollow to a 22-year-old in gang-ravaged Westbury who hasn’t showered in three days because the water pressure is zero.

Parties cannot simply demand votes; they must earn them with the same ferocity that Mamdani did. He didn’t win on vibes; he won on policy that mattered to the people in his city. South African parties need to stop campaigning on abstract ideologies and start campaigning on the pavement. This means understanding the real-world issues people in our cities are facing – like access to proper public transport, for starters.

Local government elections are not about grand geopolitical shifts. They are about the traffic light on your corner, the sewage in your street and the dry tap in your kitchen.

If the Mamdani moment teaches us anything, it is that when the disenchanted decide to become active participants, anything is possible.

The polls open in less than a year. Don’t let silence be your legacy. DM

Jillian Green is the editor-in-chief of Daily Maverick.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.