OPINIONISTA: Youth apathy is a threat to democracy, so get out there and vote By Ashley Mabasa and Thlologelo Collen Malatji
It’s just hours to the sixth national democratic elections and some of the youth, which according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa are people between the ages of 18 and 35, are taking a dim view – that is, they are not participating in the upcoming polls.
Most of the youth with political apathy about voting are organised within urban spaces and liberal universities such as the University of the Witwatersrand and University of Cape Town . This social group of youth misses the point of the importance of voting as a tool for social transformation in a democratic state such as South Africa.
In addition, we can point to the April 1974 Portuguese Carnation revolution that ousted dictator Marcelo Caetano and installed a democratic system that gave birth to Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissaus’ independence from Portugal’s colonisation. The capitalist system is based on private property ownership and those without ownership of the means of production have to sell their labour to survive. In the context of our country, Wits scholars such as Davis Francis, Imraan Valodia and Eddie Webster, battling with the question of inequality, pointed out that in South Africa, 10% own 95% of the economic and social system. The inequalities in South Africa are deeply rooted in our colonial and post-apartheid system.
The third thesis is that the youth have to vote to give the state legitimacy and stability. Not voting can easily give external forces the ability to enforce regime change with the motive of destabilising our country to accumulate our natural resources. At the heart of Venezuela’s attempt at regime change, it is clear that the US generates crises by imposing sanctions and freezing Venezuela’s assets to destabilise the government in order to intervene as a peacemaker and control the oil, then extract its oil deposits.
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