What Do We Think About Politics?

By Sniko Lukubeni

Public deliberations about the youth vote in the national elections were held at Rhodes University on Monday the 29^th of April. It was reported that according to News24, only 50% of people under the age of 29 are registered to vote in this year’s general election, and of those aged 18 and 19 years old, only 16% registered for this election. Students raised their opinions on what could be the cause of this problem.

Nwabisa Valela, a journalism student at Rhodes, stated that these political parties do not provide appealing suggestions to the youth about the change they are going to bring for the youth if the youth votes. According to the students, the political parties seem to not care about the youth, their target seems to be old people, and therefore it is mostly old people who are registered to vote and most of the youth is not.

Another journalism student, Katie Moss, commented on the issue stating that the political parties always try to make people feel guilty for not voting. They also try to make it seem like it’s a must that people should vote because “it is their right to vote”; Katie Moss said that she does not trust all of the political parties, and so if she doesn’t trust them then she has a right not to vote for them.

The political parties only tell you what they want you to hear, said Nkululeko Mhlongo. He added by saying that these parties always promise people jobs like they have all these jobs locked up in a room somewhere and as soon as people vote for them then they will unlock the door and everyone will have a job. He raised an important question asking that if they have jobs now why don’t they give them to the unemployed now to prove that they are not only promising people jobs so that people can vote for them.

Students raised the fact that one of the reasons that most of the youth doesn’t vote could be because they are not sure which party to vote for because these political parties always criticise one another without providing strategies to solving the problem they are criticising.

The students raised very important points and they had different opinions which made a lot of sense. Their opinions and questions left most realising that  we have a very corrupt government and it is not easy to trust people who say they will bring change because even the ones who are in power now  promised us change when they weren’t, and we see no change.