What comes after: During the 1994 elections, Nelson Mandela reminded the electorate that voting was merely the first step in building a democracy. (Paul Botes/M&G)
With the 2024 elections around the corner, the minds of the electorate will be turning to who they are going to vote for when the time comes. South African politics is, however, very different to that of where I come from. In the United Kingdom, it’s rare to see somebody wearing a T-shirt or hat announcing their political affiliation. In South Africa, it’s common. The ANC seems to hand out regalia every election, and the Economic Freedom Fighters even promote their “Red Friday”, where “fighters” are expected to wear their colours. One gets the feeling that many people treat political parties in South Africa like soccer teams — they are to be supported, fought for, and perhaps even form a part of one’s identity. This is not good for democracy.
Politicians are meant to work for you. They are meant to ensure that taxpayers’ money is appropriately spent to ensure the maximal wellbeing of the country’s citizens: that hospitals are built, roads maintained, electricity, quality education and clean water is available, litter is collected, sewerage is appropriately dealt with and, importantly, that the economy grows to keep unemployment low. This is no easy task, especially with the low tax base.
But politicians are voters’ employees — and you don’t go around wearing the regalia of your employees. If you have an employee, you keep track of how well they are performing and if after a few attempts at rehabilitation they continue to fail to do their job, you are forced to fire them and hire someone else.
The problem with supporting a political party, even if you are sure that they are the best option for governing the country, is quite simple: bias. In recent years we have seen a boom in literature on implicit bias. Essentially, these are unconscious biases that affect the way we judge people, or in principle, political parties. The literature mostly focuses on race and gender — it’s been argued many times that implicit biases result in, for example, black candidates of equal quality being less likely to get a job, or more likely to receive substandard medical treatment. The biases of the hiring committee see the black skin of the candidate (or even a name that indicates the candidate is likely to be black), and unconsciously emphasise every negative attribute, and de-emphasise every positive attribute.
The same applies in politics. If you support the Democratic Alliance, then you will unconsciously ignore or place less emphasis on any negative press. You might brush off the exodus of black leadership without considering the reasons at all. Similarly, if you support the EFF, you will unconsciously ignore or place insufficient weight on negative press against the party. You will assume the VBS Mutual Bank allegations are nonsense, despite their failure to bring defamation charges against those who wrote the stories, and brush off the fact that Julius Malema required a court to order him to pay a (roughly) R16 million tax bill (not a very socialist approach to wealth). You will only see the positives. The same, of course, applies to all political parties, most of which have their fair share of scandal that biases can push you to ignore.
Supporting a political party gives you biases that simply prevent you from making the right decision for you at the polls. You cannot appropriately weigh up the costs and benefits of each party. To do that, you need to look at all information you have, make good judgments about the reliability of the sources (and absolutely not referring to politicians for those judgments, who are acting in their own best interests), and determine who is going to provide the best service delivery, steal the least money, give you the best chance of getting a good job in the future, or whatever matters to you most.
So please, don’t succumb to the self-interested politician’s biggest desire: to control your bias, and ultimately your vote. Treat them as what they are: people taxpayers pay to ensure your country is run efficiently. This is not soccer. You can change teams at will, and you can change back again. And, of course, please vote.
Professor Benjamin Smart is a director of the Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine and Public Health at the University of Johannesburg.