Student activists believe #ElectionsMustFall
STUDENT activists of the Fees Must Fall and Rhodes Must Fall movements – or "fallists" as they have come to be known – boycotted yesterday's election and said they believed alternative forms of democracy are “more powerful” than the current electoral system.
They chose not to vote despite calls from Struggle stalwarts for the country's youth to make their mark.
ANC veterans Ahmed Kathrada, Denis Goldberg and Mavuso Msimang this week called on young people to participate in the elections.
However, student activists Alexandria Hotz, Simon Rakei, Mbali Matandela and Mohammed Jameel Abdulla – who played a major role in organising last year's nationwide student protests – say they do not agree with the country's current system of governance.
Hotz said she decided not to vote after the protests last year.
“I've also said, ‘no free education, no vote’, but if I were going to vote, I think it would be more on principle than on strategy. And if I were voting strategically, the only political party I could vote for that would be a contender here against the DA would be the ANC – and I'd never vote for the ANC,” Hotz said.
She found the EFF interesting, she said.
“Their policies around land, nationalisation, a living wage, being pro-Palestine and anti-patriarchal is all interesting and sounds great, but implementing those policies will prove difficult,” Hotz said.
Rakei said: “Specifically as a young person in contemporary South Africa, I find the ideological commitment to decolonial politics and the idea of imagining other forms of political expression far more valuable than participating in the current electoral system.
"There's nothing strategic about young people as a social group investing their social and political currency in partisan parties and a democratic system which has defunct systems, when they could be exercising that agency in more meaningful ways and on a more regular basis.”
Matandela said: “I wasn't going to vote unless we had free education and unless our country developed a very particular stance on land claims for South Africans.
"My stance was no free education, no land: no vote.”
Abdulla said: “Communities should be deciding how they want to be run.
"I'm very sceptical about ambitious individuals who want to come into spaces where they are supposed to be of service to the people, but instead want to serve their own interests.”
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