SPONSORED | It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? To just sleep in tomorrow and use the rest of the day to catch up on a TV series. It would be so simple to stay in bed and wait until the polls close.
It may seem like such a minuscule action in the greater scheme of things. After all, there are 26m registered voters. Nearly half the nation is armed with nothing but two ballot papers and a black pen, and hope. Hope that they will be seen and heard by the elected officials entrusted with leading them and 57m of their closest and dearest friends, family, acquaintances and frenemies to true equality and real prosperity.
Unlike me, SA is a young country. Half of the nation is under the age of 26 and more than a third of South Africans are between the ages of 15 and 34 . Yet the youth seem the most disinterested in voting.Two-thirds of the 9m unregistered voters are under the age of 30 and only 16% of 18- to 19-year-old South Africans are registered to vote – a record low. Historically, little more than half of registered voters between the ages of 20 and 29 actually show up on election day.
It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? To just sleep in on Wednesday and use the rest of the day to catch up on a TV series or read a book. It would be so simple to stay in bed until the polls close. It’s almost as if the elections are set on a winter’s day to give you one last test of your resolve to cast that ballot.
There are 48 distinct political parties on the national ballot – and who knows how many others on each of the nine distinct provincial ballots. They say it’s a record; the kids say “issalot”. I remember the last ballot being impractically long as well. I watched the chief electoral officer make his mark in a special vote on TV and he seemed to be having a hard time keeping his vote a secret. I don’t enjoy wrestling the ballot paper to find the spot to make my mark.
Few of us have the time to go over 48 long and undoubtedly winding campaign manifestos. Nitpicking, comparing and contrasting one against another; then agonising over questions of morality and ethics in leadership - you'll fall into a rabbit hole that could make you call the IEC and beg to be deregistered. But how else do you make an informed decision?
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