Next year’s general elections appear to be sowing divisions among South Africa’s social movements, which are unsure about how best to use the poll to protest against the government’s percieved lack of delivery.
The Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), which is still debating whether or not to field candidates for the 2004 poll, is currently trying to manage divided opinion.
The APF will make a decision within two weeks, but its chairperson, Trevor Ngwane, said it might opt to cast spoilt ballots.
“Spoilt votes will allow the working class to express their anger at the ballot box rather than to sit at home passively.”
Ngwane’s opinion was that the APF should not contest elections, because its representatives would be unlikely to make a difference in the current proportional representation system.
Meanwhile, the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) has urged the country’s “26-million poor and landless people” not to register or to vote.
The LPM is a movement representing people who are landless or who are currently facing eviction.
The Independent Electoral Commission has set aside next weekend — November 8 and 9 — for people to register to vote in the 2004 elections.
But the LPM says people have little reason to vote. “South African voters are expected to register to vote where they live, but the poor and landless facing forced removals and evictions have no idea where they will be living on April 27 next year, because by then we may be evicted from our homes,” the LPM said in a statement released by its Gauteng chairperson, Maureen Mnisi.
“The LPM rejects the call for poor and landless people to register to vote under these conditions — otherwise we will be helping the government to pretend that it has given us a real chance of voting when it is clearly trying to exclude us.”
National Land Committee land rights co-coordinator Andile Mngxitama asked: “Should we be surprised that people who live in poverty and are outside the economic system should find no meaning in voting?” He added that poor living conditions were eroding people’s trust in the electoral process.
Independent Electoral Commission deputy electoral officer Mosotho Moepye said registering to vote would put organisations and individuals in a better position to bargain for their interests, come the elections.
“If they don’t register to vote they have no bargaining power. I would surely urge them to register. I guess democracy accepts that where people are unhappy they are free to decide what to do. It is important to remember that it is not compulsory to vote and we can only persuade them to register,” Moepye said.
The call not to vote has been condemned by the African National Congress as “highly irresponsible”.
In a statement, the ANC said it recognised that much more still needed to be done to push back the frontiers of poverty and to address the challenges posed by unemployment and massive migration to urban areas.
The suggestion by the LPM that conditions would improve for poor and landlessness people if they did not vote defied logic, the ANC said.
“If the challenges facing the poor and the landless are going to be addressed, then they need to be actively engaged in the process of determining their future,” the statement read.