Johannesburg – As South Africa awaits the final count of the vote to be announced, political experts said that while the voter turnout figures were a concern so far, there were misconceptions that needed to be corrected.
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on Tuesday announced that around 12.2 million people voted in the elections on Monday out of the 26.2 million registered voters.
As much as this points to a serious decline, some analysts said that it was not all new to the country.
Since the 1980s, voter turnout has been declining globally, with scholars and others in the political arena warning that it is bad for democracy.
Studies also show that it usually means socio-economically underprivileged citizens and as a result, public policies benefit the rich.
This scenario has emerged in South Africa, with the suburban voters taking part in the elections while township and rural voters opted not to take part.
“It also sharpens the social contradictions in the society, so class formation starts to take on a whole new dynamic and when you are a society like South Africa, it means that those on the wrong side of inequality divide, remain on the wrong side of the inequality divide in perpetuity and there’s very little chance for them to cross over,” said Ebrahim Fakir, director of programmes at the Auwal Socio-economic Research Institute (ASRI).
He further said that if the final numbers, despite the gloomy projections, peaked at 45-48%, this would be comparatively reasonable.
