Ekurhuleni, eThekwini turnout to test municipal trust: ISS

Turnout in Ekurhuleni and eThekwini on 4 November will decide who governs South Africa’s towns and cities, but research by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) points to a deeper institutional problem: a breakdown in the relationship between municipalities, political parties and the residents they are meant to serve. The issue, ISS argues, is not voter apathy among the young.

The record of disengagement is documented. In the 2021 local elections, registered voters in their 20s turned out at just 35%, the lowest of any age group. A 2024 Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) survey conducted for the Electoral Commission found that 69% of young respondents believed their vote would make no difference, while 78% said all parties were the same once elected. These figures point to a crisis of confidence in democratic institutions rather than indifference to public life.

To understand the numbers, ISS interviewed 41 residents and community leaders from townships in the two metros in September and October, most aged 18 to 35, as part of ongoing initiatives to strengthen community engagement and resilience to prevent violence. What emerged was a deep disaffection with politics and government systems, expressed most sharply as a sense of being ignored by office-holders. “We are ignored,” said a 36-year-old unemployed man living on the R370 Social Relief of Distress grant. “Once we vote, they disappear. What kind of system is that?”

Three features of this alienation stand out. The first is an unfulfilled expectation that education will lead to employment. A 2025 Afrobarometer survey found that 97% of young South Africans had at least secondary schooling, compared with half of those over 55, yet 47% were unemployed and seeking work, and 96% said government was failing on job creation. An unemployed 25-year-old with an engineering diploma told ISS he had never registered to vote, noting that his mother had voted for the same party for years with no change to show for it. Party loyalty, it appears, is not passing to a generation that has not seen its rewards.

The second feature concerns the tier of government closest to residents. Local government, the interviewees said, is experienced as mainly absent or unconcerned with young people’s needs, and HSRC research in eThekwini found the same. The complaint is about recognition as much as service delivery.

The third is that alienation from party politics has not meant withdrawal from public life. Many interviewees volunteer as community policing forum patrollers, at care centres or as health activists. Formal politics, the research suggests, has failed to draw on this civic energy, and that failure leaves space for others to fill.

Much of the anger directed at foreign nationals reflects this broader disaffection, aimed at the most visible target. “We call them names because we are angry and hungry,” a 21-year-old in Ekurhuleni said. Anti-migrant movements such as March and March have tapped into the sentiment, with a mobilisation style more immediate and accessible to youth than party politics. An Ekurhuleni community health activist said young people were told that once foreign nationals were driven out, they could take over stalls, spaza shops and workshops, sometimes pitched electorally: vote for a particular party and “you become a mechanic.” March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma has urged supporters to vote for parties that back the movement. But a community pastor noted that residents went without bread for days after foreign-owned shops were closed, and that the jobs supposedly created “are not recorded anywhere.”

Interviewees showed little appetite for being used by parties chasing votes or movements pursuing their own agendas. A 27-year-old said parties “only act when it’s going to benefit them.” The engineering graduate, who sympathises with March and March, still plans to stay home: “I know the [election] results, they are not always good.”

Fear for women’s safety also ran through the interviews, conducted at a time when 12 women were found murdered in Ekurhuleni. A 23-year-old was “sure” foreigners were responsible, though she offered no evidence. Unlike general anti-migrant sentiment, here real fear becomes scapegoating. Young men, by contrast, mostly described tensions with foreign nationals as competition for jobs, business and even intimate partners.

The pattern is not unique to South Africa. In Germany’s 2025 election, about 21% of 18- to 24-year-olds voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany, up 14 points from 2021, while the largest share of young voters, 25%, backed the radical left. In the United States, President Donald Trump’s support among young men rose 15 percentage points between 2020 and 2024. In South Africa, no single party has captured this youth discontent, though several are courting it.

The governance risk is clear: if low youth turnout produces councils chosen mainly by older voters, and governance continues as before, the cycle of disaffection will deepen. There are positive signs, however, including young candidates entering the council race, among them proportional representatives, political activists and grassroots organisers from diverse backgrounds holding different political viewpoints.

The demands the ISS interviewees articulated are modest and local: learnerships with stipends, affordable business permits and fair access to municipal projects. Just as important is recognition, in the form of councillors who meet with young people regularly rather than only around elections, and who draw in the volunteers already holding townships together. Young people in Ekurhuleni and eThekwini have not given up on politics. They have given up on being ignored. The question for the parties and councils seeking their mandate is who is ready to listen.