Category Archives: Christelle Terreblanche

IOL: Voter apathy to hit ANC hard in poll

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http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/voter-apathy-to-hit-anc-hard-in-poll-1.1063147

Voter apathy to hit ANC hard in poll

May 1 2011 at 08:01pm
By CHRISTELLE TERREBLANCHE

Independent Newspapers

In three weeks, the ANC may have to face the fact that its dwindling support among the total voting-age population has been pushed below the one-third margin. Photo: Independent Newspapers

In three weeks, the ANC may have to face the fact that its dwindling support among the total voting-age population has been pushed below the one-third margin.

Since 1994, the ruling party’s support among all eligible voters has dropped steeply, from 53.8 percent to 38.8 percent in 2009.

Although the ANC has won all national elections with a convincing two-thirds majority, those who become disaffected tend to stay at home rather than vote for another party, according to political analyst for the Institute for Security Studies Collette Herzenberg.

The declining share is further amplified by the fact that between 4.5 and 9 million South Africans have simply not bothered to register as voters over the past 15 years.

Given that the last census was in 2001, there is currently no accurate estimate of the entire voting-age population. These two trends, along with the low turnout of registered voters during previous local government elections, makes it likely that there will be a further slide in overall support for the ANC.

The last two municipal polls saw only 48 percent of registered voters make their mark.

Despite the lack of accurate data, this could mean that anything between 12 million and 20 million eligible South Africans may choose not to exercise their right to vote on election day, May 18.

The latest voter drives from the IEC bumped up the number of registered voters to 24 million, indicating at the very least 4.5 million “missing voters” – but this could be as many as 7 million, according to some estimates.

The one wild card in this month’s election appears to be the growing politically active population under 29, who are now disproportionately represented on the voters’ roll. About 73 percent of them have registered over the last few years, according to the Afrobarometer. Although they make up about 23 percent of eligible voters, they make up 27 percent of all registered voters.

Herzenberg and others’ research shows they generally lack the close party affiliation of previous generations. It is, therefore, these young adults who hold the key to new voting patterns and election outcomes.

A 2007 Community Survey conducted by Stats SA put the population at 48 million, and a mid-year estimate in 2010 took the figure up to nearly 50 million. This means that just under half of the total population are now registered as voters, instead of the probable 60 percent estimated to be older than 18.

This would put the number of eligible, potentially registered voters closer to 30 million than the current 24 million who are registered. Herzenberg says in a chapter of the 2009 book Zunami! that indications are that the population is growing at a faster pace than the growth of the voters’ roll of 27.6 percent.

While 65.9 percent of those who voted in 2009 came out in support of the ANC, they represented less than 40 percent of the total voting-age population – shorthand for those who are eligible to make their mark. The 2009 elections saw a slightly higher turnout of registered voters after years of slow decline.

Indications are that, among disaffected communities, there is greater organisation to stay away from the May 18 polls as a form of protest than in previous elections.

For instance, shack-dweller organisation Abahlali BaseMjondolo is campaigning on a “No land No housing No vote” ticket for a mass stayaway.

Although the DA believes it would be able to give the ANC a proper run for its money in more cities and towns than those where coloured and white populations dominate, Herzenberg’s research shows that former ANC supporters choose overwhelmingly to withdraw from the democratic process, rather than vote for alternatives.

Some disaffected voters did come out of their self-imposed exile from the ballot box in 2009 to vote for Cope, but the infighting in the party may see them turn their backs on the polls once more.

Herzenberg says that although too little data is available to adequately see trends in local elections, there is enough evidence to show that the stayaway tendency is enhanced at municipal level.

“People don’t participate because they don’t have anywhere to cast their votes when they become disaffected with the ANC as you would expect in a normal democracy, but you rather see complete withdrawal in growing numbers,” she said.

A recent survey by the Human Sciences Research Council showed that about half of those who feel alienated from the ANC would nevertheless vote for the ruling party.

On the flip side this means that another half of dissatisfied supporters are not planning to cast their ballot for the ANC.

Support for the opposition has also declined since 1994 if measured against the total voting population – from 32 percent to 17 percent in 2004, yet increasing again to 20 percent in 2009. The ANC’s overall share of all voters, however, continued to drop slightly countrywide in 2009 except for a significant increase in KwaZulu-Natal.

The growth of pro-ANC votes was less than the growth of opposition votes in 2009. The DA increased its total votes by over a million in 2009 – a whopping 52.5 percent increase on its 2004 performance. – Political Bureau

Housing crisis is everybody’s problem – Sisulu

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http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3255328

Housing crisis is everybody’s problem – Sisulu
Minister calls for wealthy to dig into their pockets to help eradicate slums and promote better living for all

May 21, 2006 Edition 1

Christelle Terreblanche

Lindiwe Sisulu, the housing minister, has made a rousing appeal to South Africa’s wealthy to help eradicate the country’s slums in order to provide dignity for all.

Speaking at an international slum-dwellers conference in Cape Town this week, she said “shelter” was at the moment “a poor man’s problem” and not seen as a universal issue.

“The poor stand alone in trying to convince the rich that housing is a necessity and an important problem,” Sisulu said.

Her appeal comes on the eve of her housing budget vote speech in parliament on Wednesday, where she is expected to make a major announcement about private funding to help eradicate the housing backlog.

Sisulu was also set to provide more details about efforts to compel all role-players in the housing industry to set aside a percentage of their investments for housing for the poor as part of an unprecedented social contract she hoped to forge.

Sisulu earlier this year clashed with banks after they were perceived to have reneged on aspects of a ground-breaking deal last year to make R42 billion available for housing loans to low-income groups that previously did not qualify.

In February, she accused the banks of dragging their feet over the loans – a centrepiece of her plan for a massive building boom aimed at not only eradicating shacks and changing the apartheid landscape but also providing the poor with sustainable assets.

Sisulu warned them that a bill to compel banks to make the loans was “in the drawer” ready to be processed before the end of the year. In an interview with Independent Newspapers, she would not lift the lid on the outcome ahead of her address to parliament this week, but it is reliably understood that agreement between the parties was reached recently and that a large-scale roll-out of loans to the poor was set to kick off.

Opening the conference on Friday, attended by about 200 representatives of Slumdwellers International from different countries around the world, she described the current period in history as one of the best so far recorded, “but morally very wanting”.

“The consciousness of the rich [is] closed to the poverty that surrounds them,” she said.

Sisulu said she wanted to repeat her concern that South Africa’s poor were among those who found themselves at the bottom of the housing pile and that housing provision was also central to meeting other United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) such as universal access to drinking water.

“Therefore the fight to ensure that the MDG’s we have set for housing [are reached] is a unique challenge to us. It should be a conscience-pricking goal for the rich * to see that they can provide dignity for all, because eventually it would have nothing to do with their own security of tenure, with their own comfort.”

A cornerstone of her ambitious plan for sustainable settlements is to eradicate 2,4 million slum dwellings by 2014 through building 15 percent more houses each year, in line with South Africa’s commitment towards the housing MDGs.

In her capacity as chairperson of an organisation founded in February, the African Ministers on Housing and Urban Development, she stressed that the body resolved to go far beyond the goals set by the UN as only a fraction of those living in slums on the continent would have benefited.

“So we are working very hard to change the mindset of the housing institutions to try to ensure that we can change the format of the MDGs.”

The organisations resolved last month that involvement of the poor in reaching the goals was a priority. In line with this, Sisulu pledged a whopping R145 million at the conference towards 5 000 housing subsidies for poor people in five provinces aligned to the Federation of Urban Poor (Fedup), which hosted the international event with slum-dweller partners on three continents in preparations for an international workshop in Canada next month.

The Western Cape administration pledged a further R36 million to Fedup, whose aim is to get beneficiaries involved in decision-making and construction of their houses.

“What we are trying to do is to ensure that we change the culture of our people,” Sisulu said of the government’s joint venture with Fedup.

She lamented the fact that banks were not present at the three-day event.

“The culture of saving in South Africa is lacking. We have involvement with experienced international organisations that are able to show it is possible to save for your house and then to determine where you live, how you live. The only stakeholders that are not here are the banks and it would have been nice to have them explain how savings and access to finance work.”

She acknowledged that previous efforts to get the poor involved in housing had failed but that recent visits to Brazil, Thailand and India had shown how it could be done.

“If they can do it, we can do it better. That is my philosophy,” she said.