Why this analyst is calling Wednesday's polls a 'middle-class' election
Middle-class South Africans turned out yesterday, while poorer communities stayed away from the polls.
Sara-Jayne Makwala King
FILE: A voting station sign. Picture: EWN
EWN
Early election results from Cape Town suggest turnout was above 55% in historically white voting districts.
That's compared with 43% in predominantly coloured areas and 31% in predominantly black areas.
Political analyst Tessa Dooms told CapeTalk's Lester Kiewit the figures show a divide between middle-class voters and those living in poorer communities.
"This is, in my mind, turning out to be a middle-class election," Dooms said.
By 5 pm yesterday, the IEC reported that 12 million South Africans had already voted, overtaking the total number recorded in the 2021 local government elections.
Dooms believes increasingly poor service delivery motivated middle-class South Africans to vote, while those in less affluent areas have begun to lose faith in the electoral process.
"Middle-class communities have started to feel... the real brunt of service delivery. And on the other end of it, poorer communities who've been feeling that brunt for a long time, instead of showing up and taking their protest to the polls, seem to have just given up on the process altogether."
She added that for some, the sentiment seems to be that casting their ballot doesn't actually affect change.
"For poorer communities, the vote bringing tangible change has not necessarily worked."
Dooms said many voters had switched political allegiances in the hope of getting better services, only to be disappointed again.
"For people who've moved to the DA from the ANC and then have had to go and try and move to somewhere else from the DA in poorer communities because the DA hasn't serviced them either."
She also told Kiewit that traditional ANC supporters were struggling to find other parties that reflected both their political values and their service delivery needs.
"The two provinces where this is the most evident are going to be the Free State and the North West. where ANC voters, I think, are looking for an alternative that fits their politics, and they simply can't find one."
Dooms said voters could take lessons from Americans who this week took to the polls and put the Democrats back in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
She said South Africans shouldn't simply wait for existing politicians to do better, but support new candidates who represent their interests.
"You don't just get the politics that you want by asking existing politicians to do better."
She said meaningful political change required communities to actively support and develop new leadership.
"Even a Mandela didn't appear out of nowhere. This country organised around the name Mandela becoming the name it was, around the person of Mandela becoming this energising person."