2024 is a Tipping Point for Voter Power

The Tshwane and Joburg sagas

Last week my city, Tshwane, found itself with a new Executive Mayor. This is one Murunwa Makwarela of the Congress of the People, a former Speaker of the Council in the previous administration. His election was a surprise because it appears that he was elected with the support of the ANC and the EFF, and a string of parties that secured one seat only.

I will return to Makwarela later.

Before the actual election in the Council chamber, a gentleman called Cilliers Brink from the Democratic Alliance appeared to be the front-runner for the job. Brink is from Limpopo and had been an MP before he was called up to take up the position of Executive Mayor in Tshwane on the assumption that the previously governing coalition would elect him.

I live in Tshwane. When I voted in November 2021 I knew the mayoral candidates for the Democratic Alliance, ActionSA and the ANC, the parties I considered before casting my ballot. Brink’s name was not on the ballot. That he was going to be Executive Mayor should be no consolation to anyone who is not a DA member and had no idea who he was, or if they did, they had not specifically evaluated him for the position.

Makwarela was nowhere close to consideration by most residents who clearly preferred the ANC, DA and ActionSA candidates. Yet here he is wearing the mayoral chain literally out of the blue. I do not expect his tenure to last because these coalitions have proven to be extremely unstable. Only the heavens know who the mayor will be next time as they literally could be currently overseas working as a club security guard or a concert usher.

Last month the City of Johannesburg found itself with a new Executive Mayor, one Thapelo Ahmad from a party called Al-Jama-ah. I had never heard of Ahmad before, and it appeared to be the case for many City of Johannesburg residents. He is not alone. Kenny Kunene of the Patriotic Alliance was also not on the ballot in November 2021, but he is now a municipal minister responsible for transport. He was quickly sworn in when the new coalition was put together in a smoke-filled room somewhere.

There could be worse to come

If you find this difficult to accept, please consider that this could happen next year when we have our next national and local government elections. Once we vote for political parties they get to do whatever they want in terms of our system. Even now we can find ourselves with a new President who is not even an MP right now but can be speedily sworn in so they can be President.

The voice of voters is totally irrelevant between elections, and our system does not enable voters to have a voice either. They must just shut up and accept whatever political parties do. In other words, they have a blank cheque to do with the country whatever they privately agree to do.

Back to Makwarela.

So, it also turns out the gentleman was sequestrated as recently as 2019. In terms of our law, someone who has been sequestrated cannot hold public office for ten years. As we can all expect, it seems that not much due diligence was done either in 2021 or now when he was chosen as mayor. In any event, there is still nothing voters can do about it if the parties that put him there want ignore this concern.

The point I am making here is that we have a broken political system. It actively disempowers citizens by turning them into mere voting cattle who must move or stop whenever told to do so by politicians. They may also only speak when spoken to otherwise they must leave everything to politicians and political parties to bring their friends in an out into powerful and important positions whenever they feel like.

It gets worse. During the 2021 Local Government Elections only 30% of eligible citizens voted. In other words, you have less than a third of voters having played a limited role in choosing who leads them for five years. The other 70% had no say either because they were not registered or because they simply did not turn out to vote.

What we must do

The first thing we must acknowledge is that we have a broken political system, which needs to be fixed urgently. It is designed to give power to rogues and renegades who do not want to be accountable to voters.

Secondly, we must make it a central political issue for 2024 because without accountability, there is not democracy. Citizens cannot go to court, using millions of rand they do not have, to get any accountability at all from the people who belong to the parties they voted for. In other words, voters must insist on a system that repositions them as bosses of the elected, not subordinates such as it does now.

How can this be done? For example, the law could insist that a person can only be president or mayor if they were on the list when the election took place. Political parties will not agitate for that suggestion because they want to be unaccountable and do whatever they like such as they are doing now.

Thirdly, we must take on the responsibility of ensuring at least 10 people we know who are not registered to vote, are registered to vote so that they can vote for a political agenda that seeks to empower voters, not weaken them. This is one of the principles Rise Mzansi must fight for. Doing so does not mean we do not care about unemployment, crime, and poverty, among others. It simply means that we believe it is only when politicians and political parties are more accountable that they will start being serious about addressing them.

When people ask what Rise Mzansi stands for, one of the things we must tell them is that we stand for democratic accountability where the system is designed to force the elected to carry out the will of the people, not to line their pockets in our name.