Election education

Election street signs. Image: News24

There are municipal elections coming up in South Africa this Wednesday the 3rd of August. I would consider myself a fairly active citizen, but I have not done nearly as much research into both the election process and the parties and their manifestos as I would have liked.

Luckily I had an informative walk on the mountain (ah Cape Town...) this afternoon where I learnt the following from my father (primarily), sister and brother-in-law:

• There are 3 elections in SA, Municipal (like the upcoming ones), Provincial and National. The Provincial and National elections happen at the same time (you receive 2 separate ballots) and the next one is in 2019.
• In the upcoming municipal elections, you will also receive 2 ballots. One is for your ward councillor, and the other is for proportional representation. This means that the first you vote for a person, and the second you vote for a party, who then puts forward a the person that they select to represent the party. This applies for metropolitan municipalities, it's slightly different if you live outside of a metro (city).
• If you haven't heard, or don't know anything about your ward councillors, get to know them! You can search for them on the IEC website. Some of the political parties also list their ward councillors (and their contact details) on their websites.
• In some cases, you might want a certain party to retain control of your municipality, but you might not like their plans, which are laid out in their manifesto, or believe they haven't been responsive enough in the past. You could then vote for another party on the proportional representation part of the ballot, but vote for the party you would like to retain control (actually their candidate) for your ward. This could be one way to support smaller parties, but does rely on your being pretty certain that the incumbent party will retain power.

These helped me get a better idea of what will actually happen on Wednesday, and my part in it. However, I still think that we need to flex our citizen muscles more - and I wish I'd done more in the run up to this election! These are some things we could still do:

• Find out about parties plans on a specific issue (I'd choose the environment, but what's your issue? Crime? Support for small businesses? Free wifi?). If you do - share your findings!
• Contact my councillor and find out what she or he has already done, and what their plans are. Share what they say with those in the ward/community.
• Contact an expert on an issue and find out if they have, or if they know of anyone who has, compared the political parties stance on their issue. Perhaps ask them to summarise it?

I'm sure there are lots of other things you could do too. If you have other ideas, or if you think I've made any mistakes in this post, please tell me (and by extension others who might read this) in the comments below. I think the more we participate in our democracy as active citizens, the stronger South Africa will be.

As said in this Story of Stuff video: Being a responsible citizen starts with voting, but that really is just the beginning!

Update 01/08: Follow @AGFaull (Senior Researcher, Criminology, UCT) and look back through his timeline for some information and opinion on the political parties approach to crime.