Voting enlightenment

“We don’t exist to push people in a certain direction, but we are there to highlight what they need to know in order to make decisions.”

University of Cape Town (UCT) first-year law student Thaafir Mustapha and his team had this vision when crafting their non-profit Instagram account – SoWeVote – to educate voters about political parties and their policies.

With elections having concluded and a new government in place, there continues to be room for more education around the Government of National Unity (GNU) and the local government elections in a few years’ time. For this reason, SoWeVote will look to tailor their content to address voter concerns.

It was not by chance that Mustapha took on this massive task of trying to make sense of often-dense policies and turning them into bite-size nuggets. Indeed, Mustapha has worked with a Member of Parliament (MP) in the past and is using his observations to drive their social media voter education content.

“In a sense SoWeVote is not only about young people, but also young, fresh ideas because you could have young people perpetuating old ways of thinking and I felt the way to get that message across is through the vote because in that way you actualise the power that you have,” he explained.

“Through the vote it’s about making people feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves, which is South Africa, and realising that we didn’t get to where we are now by being individualistic and complacent with the way things are being run right now. We must aspire to be better, and the vote is a tangible way to get people to do that.”

“It always serves up an interesting dilemma because sometimes what a politician says and what the facts state are at odds.”

Twenty-seven million South Africans registered to vote on 29 May. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) reported that only 16 million voted. Of the 27 million who had intentions of voting, it was expected that 4.3 million were young voters.

“We started organically; we didn’t know it was going to be an organisation on the scale that it’s on right now, but we did start by speaking to people in our communities and schools, asking probing elections questions around voting and registration. And there was quite a lot of disdain aimed at politics as a concept and that drives home the need to change the culture.”

Politicians

Mustapha added: “We are trying to demonstrate the real-life implications of certain things and make it easier for people to identify their own values in things like politics [because] people learn politics through learning about themselves and how their values shape politics, and so over time their politics will evolve as they do. It’s about people thinking independently using the information. Our strategy is also using the politicians themselves for information and then we package it for our audience. It always serves up an interesting dilemma because sometimes what a politician says and what the facts state are at odds.”

Mustapha admits there is still more to do, and they are already laying the foundations for their next frontier, which is getting ineligible voters into the conversation as quickly as possible.

“I want people to participate in elections because people fought long and hard for the rights we have now, and we need to exercise them. I’m also sympathetic to people who feel a level of disdain towards the system; now we are building on civic voter education and the earlier we get the message to the younger audience, the better because you’ll have a generation that is strong and resolute way before they need to go to the voting booth.”