South Africa’s voter registration drive combats apathy ahead of next year’s national elections.
Polling stations open doors, wooing electors back after years of dwindling participation.
Oliver Curlewis, 18, hopes elections will change South Africa, considering emigration if conditions worsen.
Poor services, energy crisis, and a faltering economy disillusion many South Africans with their government.
14 million unregistered youth
Voter turnout declined since the jubilant 1994 democratic elections in South Africa, shrinking every five years.
In 2019, only 49% of eligible voters showed up on election day.
Young people, especially, stayed away from the polls.
In 2019, only 15% of 18 to 19-year-olds and 30% of 20 to 29-year-olds voted.
Electoral commission calls on 14 million unregistered youth to step up, gather their squads, and register.
No appeal
Not all were heeding the call.
At the school where Curlewis registered, chairs laid out to accommodate queues sat empty, as bored political representatives chatted and played board games at party stalls set up outside.
While it was possible to sign up online, a few hours before closing time just over 30 people had visited the station, which serves a ward of more than 2,000 residents.
“I’m just asking myself, is it really worth it?” said Noluthando Tshazibane, 20, who was shopping with a friend at a nearby mall.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) once led by Nelson Mandela has seen its once-stellar standing mauled by allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
In power since the end of apartheid, polls suggest it could see its vote drop below 50 percent and lose its overall parliament majority for the first time in 2024.
Yet, disaffection with the ANC has not directly translated into support for the opposition.
‘Old people’
Walking past another polling station off a busy shopping street in Johannesburg’s rundown city centre, a 26-year-old medical student, who preferred not to give her name, said she was not going to register.
“I do not know who to vote for,” she said, complaining that South African politics was dominated by “old people” and no party appealed to her.
The electoral commission said last month the vote will be held between May and August next year.
“Go out into the community and campaign as hard as possible so that we can show that the ANC is the only party that can continue governing this country,” President Cyril Ramaphosa told party activists as he visited a polling station in Soweto in the morning.
