Dear Editor,

According to the IEC a record number of voters in SA, about 29 million, have registered to vote in the local government elections in November.

SA has an overall population of about 63 million people of whom approximately 21 million are under 18 years old and about 3 million are foreigners. Both sub-groups are not entitled to vote.

Accordingly, the maths indicates that 63 minus 29 minus 21 minus 3 leaves one with roughly 10 million SA adults who have not registered to vote in November even though their right to vote is indubitably and unarguably a hard-won dividend of democracy, for which so many died during the struggle for liberation from the yoke of apartheid, and beyond, due to political killings during the entire post-liberation period up to the present.

The 10 million non-participants present a poor reflection of the commitment of South Africans to the national ideals of multi-party constitutional democracy under the rule of law, the style of government overwhelmingly accepted by all who supported the adoption of the current constitution, our supreme law.

The IEC has a constitutional mandate to ensure that our elections are all free and fair. Educating voters or potential voters on the benefits of constitutionalism ought to be front and centre in the work the IEC does on an ongoing basis. It has not moved 10 million potential voters to register.

Shortly after the formation of Accountability Now in 2009 a handbook on the constitution called “Know Your Rights, Claim Your Rights” was presented to the then chair of the IEC. It is still available, now in its third edition, on the Accountability Now website. Written in plain language by non-lawyers, the handbook serves as an introduction to active citizenship and the cultivation of an awareness that the state is obliged to respect, protect, promote, and fulfil the rights guaranteed to all in the Bill of Rights. Among those rights is the right to vote which is listed among the rights set out in Section 19 of the Bill of Rights.

It costs nothing to point non-voters in the direction of the handbook. Many registered voters choose not to cast their vote, to our national shame. In the 2024 national elections the ANC won 40% of the seats with only 16% of the electorate’s votes.

Yours in accountability,
Paul Hoffman SC