Qaanitah Hunter, co-author of ‘Who Will Rule SA?’ presented at the event in Durban. [Picture: Salaamedia]
People need to wrest power back from politicians before the sun of our democracy sinks below the horizon of hope. That was the urgent plea from speakers at a recent event aimed at activating Muslim voters ahead of the 2024 elections.
The event took place at Andaluz Boutique, Durban, on Friday. In 2021, the city was the scene of the worst levels of anarchy since townships went up in flames in apartheid. Much of this was attributed to symptoms of a flailing democracy – poverty, unemployment, crime and racism.
The main speaker at the event, News24’s assistant political editor and co-author of Who Will Rule SA? Qaanitah Hunter urged guests to return to the polls. She said the “unprecedented levels of anarchy” that year showed “symptoms” and taught a “lesson for South Africa”.
“As South Africans, as democracy continued year-in and year-out, we decided to outsource politics to politicians. By doing that, what we did was we said politicians will sort out what they need to sort out and our lives will continue in spite of politics,” she lamented.
Other speakers also pointed out the high stakes of the 2024 national and provincial levels. Dubbed the most important since the first democratic poll in 1994, it is the first time the African National Congress (ANC) stares down at the prospects of losing the majority needed to govern.
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Disengagement
Reflecting on the 1994 liberation poll that captured the imagination of millions around the globe and birthed the democratic dispensation, several speakers noted an unfortunate disengagement from politics thereafter.
Ebrahim Patel, past president of the Minara Chamber of Commerce and current chief at Siyaxoxa Tech, impressed the need for people to cast their votes on 29 May.
“When good people like yourself, after 1994, decided not to participate in politics, the bad moved in to occupy that space,” he said.
It was a not-so-subtle hint at the rotten apples that looted the state and left it to hobble along, barely able to deliver basic services like water and electricity. But he placed the responsibility for this on the doormats of those who shied away from participating in the polls.
“If you are saying that there are corrupt officials that are in government, it is because we allowed them to occupy that space. In order for us to change that, we need to participate a lot more,” he urged.
Political analyst Dr Imraan Buccus, warned the country was in serious trouble. Drawing parallels between the current situation and the Middle East just before the Arab Spring, he said it was a ticking time bomb.
“What drove the Arab Spring was … youth unemployment and poverty. We have those exact same ingredients in South Africa. Fifty percent of people in South Africa are under 30; 70% of that category are poor and unemployed.”
Hunter said South Africans had, in recent decades, forsaken their democratic duty to elect and hold accountable. Instead, she said, they took up private alternatives to state services wherever they could find them.
“If politicians make bad choices around the maintenance of power stations, we will then eventually save up and put solar panels. When politicians mess up our schooling systems, we will go and spend R100 000 to send our children to private schools. When crime is at unprecedented rates because of failed policies and because of failed social interventions, we will just pay for private security,” she said.
The duty then, the panellists seemed to agree, was upon ordinary South Africans to assume their responsibility to vote. In doing so, they would be able to elect representatives and hold them accountable when things went wrong.
