FT: SA’s ‘born-free’ generation scorns democracy as ‘pyramid scheme’

As South Africa prepares for its most contentious elections in three decades, disillusionment among young voters is palpable. Olwethu Ndema, 28, symbolizes a growing sentiment; she sees voting as a futile exercise benefiting a privileged few. With only 40% of her peers registered, a stark rejection of democracy looms. As the ANC faces unprecedented pressure, new parties like Rise Mzansi vie to redefine the nation's political landscape, resonating with a generation weary of broken promises..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..By Monica Mark.Disenchanted young people turn away from ruling ANC ahead of country's most contested elections in three decades .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Watching a memorial event in Sharpeville, the township that played a pivotal role in the country's liberation struggle, Olwethu Ndema knew thousands had fought for freedom and the right to vote for South Africa's Black majority. But she has no intention of exercising that right in the May 29 general election.."Voting is simply a pyramid scheme that makes the elected richer and richer," said the 28-year-old intern at a government development agency, who plans to abstain..Thirty years after Nelson Mandela's African National Congress swept to power on a promise to lift up millions of impoverished Black citizens, Ndema is part of a younger generation so disenchanted with democracy that only 40 per cent have registered to vote..Read more: 🔒 FT: Young South Africans are rethinking Nelson Mandela's legacy.In a sign of their disillusion, almost 60 per cent of South Africans aged 18 to 24 rejected the idea that democracy was always the best system of governance in a poll by the Human Sciences Research Council, a South African think-tank.."The idea that democracy is benefiting a small group of the elite has really entrenched itself in our society," said Tessa Dooms, director at the Johannesburg-based think-tank Rivonia Circle. "Young people have been made to feel they have no stake in politics.".Among many who lived through the privations of apartheid, the ANC, which has governed uninterrupted for the past three decades, still holds sway. But polls suggest the party led by President Cyril Ramaphosa is under the greatest pressure since it gained power in 1994..Those aged under 35 — roughly a third of the electorate — could hasten a post-ANC world if increasingly confident opposition parties manage to woo the younger cohort..Nicknamed the "born-free" generation, they have lived their entire lives under an ANC government increasingly engulfed by corruption scandals. The party initially oversaw a rise in living standards, but a growing wealth gap has made South Africa the world's most unequal country, according to the World Bank. Two decades of economic stagnation mean half of its young people are unemployed, the vast majority of them Black..The ANC's economic legacy has been questioned even by members of Mandela's family.."The driver of the bus is now Black," said Mfundo Mtirara, a traditional leader and Mandela's niece, referring to the ANC government. "But we are still on the same bus.".Political parties have seized on this theme, most prominently the liberal Rise Mzansi, which was formed last year. It is campaigning with the slogan "2024 is our 1994" — a once unthinkable allusion linking the fight for liberation from apartheid to a new battle to unseat the party that helped end it..The message has resonated with donors. Despite polling at no more than 0.5 per cent nationally, Rise Mzansi raised R16.7mn ($920,000) in the past quarter, outpacing all other officially recorded party donations..Its leader, Songezo Zibi, was among the delegates from more than a dozen political parties at the Sharpeville memorial event in March. Officially, they were there to commemorate the massacre of 69 unarmed Black anti-apartheid protesters in 1960, an atrocity that turned the movement from non-violent resistance to armed struggle..But in full campaigning mode, pick-up trucks mounted with loudspeakers blasted out party slogans and helicopters circled overhead as politicians criss-crossed the township's potholed roads.."It's become a circus devoid of meaning," Zibi muttered, as he drove between campaign stops. "They've lost their way.".Read more: Election crossroads: What an ANC-DA coalition could mean for South Africa – Shawn Hagedorn."Since I was young, I've been volunteering for the ANC. But when it came to jobs, only those who are connected [to the party] would get them," said Bulelwa Magadla, who joined supporters following Zibi as he laid flowers at a memorial. "Those who have been on the ground get nothing. I'm done with the ANC.".The radical Economic Freedom Fighters, which wants to nationalise critical state industries and redistribute the majority of the country's land to Black South Africans, has also campaigned on an anti-ANC platform. "We are not part of the 1994 elite pact. We are a completely new generation, with new demands," its manifesto begins..But some experts believe such messaging will backfire. Slogans connecting the upcoming polls to the historic 1994 election "served only to help the ANC craft a powerful message to its base: mobilise to defend the gains of democracy", Kabelo Khumalo, a South African commentator, wrote in an op-ed for South African newspaper Business Day..Among rural and urban low-income voters, support for the ANC remains strong across all age groups. "One of the abiding mistakes [of political observers] is to treat everybody as a middle-class voter connected to the formal economy," said Steven Friedman, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Johannesburg.."They've done many things for us," said Nthabiseng, a Sharpeville resident and one of almost 28mn of the country's 60mn citizens who receive a monthly welfare grant, part of a social safety net that will cost the treasury R217bn this year..The party's free housing programme had given her a home, and her two children attended free government schools, she said. "We will die with the ANC because of the history of the ANC," said Nthabiseng, who declined to give her surname..Despite the party's vote share declining since 2004, no party has come close to dislodging the ANC. Its biggest rival, the Democratic Alliance, which governs in the Western Cape province, is seen by many as out of touch with the lives of the Black majority and has never secured more than 26 per cent of the vote.."Parties that see a big jump [in votes] will probably be the ones that have spoken to young people," said Kristal Duncan-Williams, project lead at civil society organisation Youth Capital. "Because they're the ones that are going to make the biggest difference..Read also:.ANC's betrayal: From liberation to inequality – the soaring wealth gap in South Africa: Andrew KennySouth Africa's unemployment crisis: Youth, women, and constitutional rights at stake – Eustace DavieJardine's party, Change Starts Now, launches vision for a working and caring South Africa.© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd.

FT: SA’s ‘born-free’ generation scorns democracy as ‘pyramid scheme’

Related Stories

The AI backlash is only getting started — and the stakes couldn't be higher

Rian Malan writes to Helen Zille: Behind the MoM marches lurks something far more dangerous

Duarte da Silva: South Africa is spending R1.77bn a year to keep a R60bn loss running

Sara Gon: The oldest hatred and its newest mutations: antisemitism's enduring lies