Reflection on the Elections - Amelia Bursi, Elizabeth Hatting, and Sara Stubbert

While in Cape Town, we (Elizabeth, Amelia and Sara) are lucky enough to get to work at the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Wednesday they held their municipal elections throughout the entirety of South Africa, and we were able to spend Tuesday and Wednesday observing their center of operations for the Western Cape. What stuck out to us most during the time we spent there was the excitement of the South African people about even the local electoral process. As the South African democracy is only seventeen years old, compared to
the hundreds of years democracy has been around in the US, everyone is incredibly excited to cast their ballot and be represented in the democratic system. Even those in the incredibly impoverished townships we visited earlier in the week recognize the extreme importance of voting and supporting a government of the people. Even the excitement of the presidential elections in the US in 2008 cannot compare to the energy that seems to be sweeping the Cape Town area as a result of the elections.
The other component of our interactions thus far with the IEC and South African students and individuals involved at the center for operations that has been incredibly interesting is the individual responsibility they feel when casting their votes. Trevor, the head of communications and the individual who has been in charge of us for the past few days, was discussing the voting process with us on Tuesday and made a comment that astounded me. Trevor remarked that he asked his child who he would vote for (if allowed) in the elections. Unsurprisingly, the child remarked that he would vote for the party that Trevor supports. The response given to the child (who could not articulate the merits of the ANC beyond familial obligation) was that he should not blindly follow, but rather formulate his own opinions and political affiliations. This entire mindset is just completely different than what we have observed within much of the United States, where individuals are content to follow the politics of their parents or friends without ever being encouraged to question the real merits of the policies being professed. Especially as South Africa moves farther away from the apartheid period, young South Africans are starting to feel less obligation (if any) to the ANC that their parents often felt a great allegiance to due to the party’s work to free the people from the apartheid regime. This seems to indicate movements toward looking to the future, rather than the past, for political decision making and voting behavior for the South African people. This movement can only be a positive as they strive to fix the social, economic and political problems that are plaguing the country.