Dikgang Moseneke, a former Deputy Chief Justice, released a report about our country’s ability to proceed with local government elections in October 2021. According to his report, municipal elections this year would likely “not be free or fair”. The reasons that gave rise to this view included the concern that parties and independent candidates would be hampered by the Covid-19 regulations during their campaigns. Furthermore, voters who were unable to register online would also be disadvantaged, according to Moseneke.
If the South African government decides to postpone elections, it should be a concern to people who love freedom in South Africa. With this new standard, the government will have the power to influence and postpone elections according to its own interests. If there is one lesson citizens have learned over the past year, it is that government cannot be trusted with unbridled power.
A cliché that rang true last year was that ‘a man’s true character is revealed in times of crises or temptation’. When the ANC government allowed its associates to plunder the R500 billion that was meant to help the disadvantaged, it highlighted just how out of touch politicians are with reality in South Africa. Many of them were simply indifferent to the pain of those who had lost their jobs and couldn’t be sure where their next meal would come from.
It can be said that while the Covid-19 pandemic caught the world by surprise, the damage it caused to people’s lives was exacerbated by the impact of the government’s approach to handling the crisis. When the lockdown was implemented in March 2020, the blow to the economy cost 3 million people their jobs. This is scenario could have been avoided had the government listened to the warnings of opposition parties, think tanks, and workers who were affected by the harshness of the lockdown.
The IRR recommended, for example, that the government should end ‘ideological hostility to businesses and seek cooperation instead.’ Cooperating with businesses could have seen the introduction of sensible solutions that were less destructive than the government’s lockdown policy.
South Africans must have the opportunity to vote in the upcoming municipal elections, so that the people affected by the ANC’s terrible calibre of leadership can have their say in how governments are run in their communities. By postponing the elections, political parties like the ANC, DA, and IFP, or coalitions, will be imposed on communities, and this has serious ramifications for service delivery at the critical local government level.
For voters intent on ousting failing politicians, postponing the elections means that the reign of incompetence will be prolonged in their areas. This translates into taps that will continue to run dry, potholes that will not be filled, refuse collection services that will not operate effectively, and broken streetlights that won’t be fixed.
Earlier in July 2021, when looters pillaged, and in some cases destroyed, countless businesses in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, the authorities were unable to check the mayhem before business owners throughout the affected provinces incurred massive losses. This episode highlighted the risk of looting and civil unrest occurring on a scale sufficient to destabilise law and order.
An associated concern is that postponing the elections runs the risk of triggering further unrest, especially among angry citizens seeking to pressurize the government into upholding democracy.
The Covid-19 pandemic deserves careful attention because of the impact it has on vulnerable people’s health, but that does not mean that South Africans should lose out on the chance to exercise their democratic rights in elections. Democracy is important because it empowers citizens to take action against underperforming politicians. The ANC has used the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to crush the economy with its statist dogmas. We should not allow them to do the same with our country’s precious democracy, regardless of the excuses that they present to the public. The danger in postponing the elections is that it will allow the ANC to subvert the democratic process, with dire consequences for South African democracy.
