The Nelson Mandela Foundation hosted a successful critical dialogue
The 2024 South African general elections will define our country’s trajectory.
In addition to its instalment of a critical dialogue series, the Nelson Mandela Foundation hosted a discussion on October 12 which focused on the 2024 elections and what role civil society should play.
The dialogue was attended by members of the civil society sector and activists.
According to the former vice chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), Terry Tselane, the 2024 South African general elections are touted as unprecedented and will define our country’s trajectory.
“Some have even contrasted 2024 to our first democratic elections in 1994. However, there is concern that civil society is not organised, coordinated and ambitious enough to make the most of the opportunities that the general elections present.”
Tselane noted five areas in which civil society must play a role to ensure a healthy and participatory democracy as well as a successful election process:
- Democratic culture: advocacy around civic education and ending problematic practices such as disruption and political killings.
- Advocacy around electoral policy: such as the work done to allow independents to run without belonging to a political party.
- Capacitating parties: especially around coalition governance towards stabilising the political space.
- Election monitoring and observing: ensuring that the elections take place and that they are free and fair.
- Combatting disinformation and misinformation: particularly around digital technologies and artificial intelligence that have the potential to capture an election by manufacturing ignorance and conspiratorial thinking such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
When asked why the lead-up to the 2024 elections is critical, Secretary-General of Equal Education, Noncedo Madubedube said civil society may be potentially getting distracted by the moment.
“In 2020, the C19 People’s Coalition which was the biggest gathering of social justice that was able to proactively respond to protecting the most marginalized quickly demobilised when the levels of the pandemic went down. The political power that we had in that moment, which was related to Covid fizzled out, those relationships may have lasted but they did not do anything for the longevity of struggle and progressive reform in the country as anticipated.”
Madubedube added that society needs to think deeply about a grassroots approach that does the long-haul work of conscientising South Africans around the levers of participating in democracy not only for 2024 but beyond it.
Former leader of the official opposition, Lindiwe Mazibuko noted that she is of the view that this moment that civil society feels energised by is long overdue. For too long, civil society groups, particularly the more progressive ones have thought politics were too ‘dirty’ for them and were above politics.
Assistant editor of politics and opinion at News24, Qaanitah Hunter explained her observations about the changing nature and tonality of civil society.
“For the longest time, society and civil society in South Africa outsource the solutions to South Africa’s political problems to the same people who created the problem. There is a level of paralysis in society that says the ANC government in eThekwini who may or may have not been complicit in the July 2021 unrest must solve the problems of eThekwini, we have a problem where 80% of children under the age of 10 cannot read for meaning but we want the department of education to solve the problem.”
This dialogue will be followed up by a Critical Dialogue on the land question in today’s context and will surely feed into reflections on the upcoming elections.
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