1.6 Million New Youth Voters for South Africa's Election
A couple months ago, I quite literally woke up in the middle of the night with an absolutely mad idea. Like most South Africans, I had been thinking a lot about the 2024 national election, which has been widely hailed as the most decisive one since democracy in our nation’s history.
30 years of democracy. And with me being 30 years old; my entire life, everything I had known and everything I can become and create was and is entirely wrapped up in this bigger story. In so many ways we are the product of context. It felt personal.
But more than that, it was a duty - quite literally. Ever since that absolutely crazy November night in 2021 when I got a call from The President’s office telling telling me that I was being appointed to the board of directors of the National Youth Development Agency - being screened by the State Security Agency, being questioned on live TV in Parliament, being flown to Pretoria for a 10 day induction programme on public sector governance, extensive training and upcoming exams on public sector board directorship, diplomatic training and a special passport, representing South Africa at geopolitical events, countless documents - hundreds of pages thick, committee reports, board reports, financial statements, inquests, politics, programmes for youth development and training, projects for employment initiatives and job readiness, SETAs, partnerships, research, more parliament, drafting policy, the nuances of public-private partnerships, the insane responsibility of a team of hundreds and signing off on the expenditure of tax-payer’s money and the millions of young South Africans who we must champion, fundraising and most importantly nearly three years of engagement with the NYDA teams across the country that are our frontline in supporting South African youth and visiting our beneficiaries - promoting the mechanisms of our democracy is quite literally my job.
And so the idea of One Million For Democracy was born, with the goal of getting 1 million young South Africans registered to vote. Another side-focus was the South Africans abroad, and supporting the initiatives happening there to promote awareness for how voting abroad works and the fight to get more voting stations for South Africans who understand their democratic duty and do not take lightly the sacrifice that was made by so many millions so that everyone can have their vote and their say.
Of the nearly 1.8 million people in the 18–19-year-old age group eligible to vote in the last election, 90% did not register (IEC 2021). Similarly, less than 20% of the population aged 20–34 registered to vote, in contrast to over 90% of the population aged 40 and older (IEC 2021).
The most commonly cited reasons for decreasing turnout are ‘voting costs’ or barriers to voting, which are usually magnified for the youngest voters. These include: navigating the process of registration for the first time, finding location of polling places, learning about parties and candidates, transport to voting stations and relying on a peer group that includes a large share of similarly inexperienced young voters.
After workshopping the idea with the executive and our incredible projects team at NYDA, just under R1 million budget was allocated and the youth voter registration and civic education campaign was launched in collaboration with the Independent Electoral Commission. Research from the previous election had shown us that people were more likely to vote with face-to-face engagement. Grassroots work was critical for us to make this campaign a success. One of our flagship programmes at the National Youth Development Agency is our revitalized National Youth Service, which is also a Presidential programme, and the biggest youth service in Africa.
We recruited, mobilised and trained 20 000 National Youth Service participants on democracy education, voter registration and the voting process. Training was done by the IEC and the goal was to penetrate deeply into urban, peri-urban but most critically rural areas with information dissemination. Each person was given a toolkit containing all relevant information and forms related to the services to be rendered (which also allowed us a standardized collection and analysis of data).
We coordinated civic education engagements led by volunteers for communities, schools and youth in institutions of higher learning. On the mechanism of democracy, our team worked in communities to help people apply for and collect their identity documents from the Department of Home Affairs. We did this across nine provinces in a series of events and expos in partnership with the IEC. The events were shaped as opportunity expos (to encourage young people to attend), so we also brought together stakeholders from funding institutions, the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, SETAs (sector education and training authorities), the National Student Financial Aid Scheme and TVETs (Technical and Vocational Training Colleges).
Of course, with this being a digital age, we also rolled out a social media campaign in multiple languages (I’m sure everyone will remember my Afrikaans register to vote poster) with the slogan of #YourDemocracyOwnIt. We hosted live dialogues on facebook and instagram and our team at the NYDA made sure to engage with comments on the posts on the technicalities and importance of voting and sharing IEC content to our substantial follower base.
It was a lot.
The election is on 29 May. Voter registration closed on 23 February.
And we did it.
We did it.
Not only was there 1 million new youth voter registrations, the number came out at 1.6 million new young people on the voter’s roll across South Africa.
Democracy only works when people participate. All a country really is is enough people that are willing to uphold its principles, to come together and say “this is what we believe, and this is how we’re gonna build it”. It’s kinda crazy to think that just a couple years ago the vast majority of our country had no franchise, and a century or so before that stretching back to the beginnings of recorded history, most of humanity had less than no franchise, less than no human rights. The incredible strides our species has taken in advancing technology, healthcare, human decency, the allevement of suffering and just the very idea that human life is precious and every person just by being born deserves freedom, equality, safety, a voice and every opportunity to become the best they can is something that should never, ever, ever be taken for granted.
Once every four years we all have the chance to take part in this incredible evolution of our species’ progress, to work towards a future that is even more mind-bogglingly awesome than what we have now. But only if we get up off our arses and do something about it.
There’s a lot of conflict in the world right now and areas of open warfare. The inability of some people to see eye-to-eye and work together poses an existential threat to our world and it can feel infuriating watching global “leaders” fail repeatedly at building peaceful, thriving, diverse communities. Because it’s not impossible. We did in South Africa in 1994. We took a country that literally invented the concept of Apartheid, and without a civil war built the rainbow nation with one of the most progressive constitutions the world had ever seen. Our country has come too far and overcome too much to not care about this election.
Mandela won in 1994 and gave his inaugural speech. I’ve watched it a couple times, and shared it loads on my socials. At one point he says: “our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all. All this we owe both to ourselves, and to the peoples of the world.”
So what comes next?
Well, for the 2019 elections 26 756 649 people were registered to vote but only 17 672 851 voted on the 8th of May 2019. This year, there’s over 27.79 million voters - the highest ever since democracy in South Africa. So now we need to get people to the voting booths on 29 May. We need to keep the energy, keep pestering our friends, family and community so there’s no excuses, we need to combat defeatism, laziness and excuse-making. We need to share it across every platform - democracy matters, say it again and again and again so that 27.79 million people leave their homes on 29 May to head to their voting station and uphold accountability in governance, knowing that the success or failure of a nation depends on all of us getting involved and making it work.