NAWAAL DEANE, Johannesburg | Friday
NEARLY a quarter of South African voters would stay away from the polls if they were dissatisfied with the performance of their preferred party.
That is one of the findings in a study conducted into voter behaviour released this week by the Independent Electoral Commission. Another is that 46% of those who did not vote in the 1999 election either believed that their vote would not make a difference or just lacked interest in elections.
The commission contracted the Human Sciences Research Council to evaluate voting behaviour, trends and attitudes towards elections in South Africa.
The study is a culmination of focus groups involving 3054 voting-age South Africans together with discussions and statistical analyses of local electoral and social profiles.
The registration process proved to be the largest obstacle for most voters intending to participate in the elections. In the 1999 elections, 33% of non-voters stayed away because of problems in the process, while 6% never made it to the voting booths because with too few voting stations, those that existed were overcrowded or too far to travel to.
The study looks at how social context affects the electoral process. One of the major findings is that rural communities are at a social disadvantage and that registration in rural areas is much lower than in urban areas.
According to the study, these findings emphasise the fact that South Africa “faces a major challenge of ensuring that disadvantaged rural communities become full participants in the electoral system”.
Practical difficulties resulted in 830 000 potential voters – most of them disadvantaged rural residents – not registering and falling through a “registration gap”.
One participant said that the absence of a Home Affairs office in rural areas meant that during registration campaigns people from a number of villages converge on a small town, creating overcrowding and long queues – and highlighting the level of the challenge. “Sometimes some go home without registering and have to come back the following day. This costs a lot of money, especially in areas where transport is a problem to go to town,” says a participant.
A solution suggested in the study is that makeshift registration offices should be sent to rural areas.
“A central challenge is to ensure that all South Africans – irrespective of their diverse social circumstances – have equal opportunities to take part in the electoral process.”
The study concludes that it will be part of the commission’s duty to ensure that social disadvantages do not pose unusually steep obstacles to voter participation.