Staying away from the polls doesn’t ‘show’ a politician anything other than that they can ignore you without consequence. Come late 2026, I will have a household of eligible voters – from the old-hand octogenarian to the newly minted 18-year-old. The election date is yet to be announced, but we have already started to have some lively conversations about voting, and why it’s important to be an active citizen in this space.
The apathy towards taking part in the polls is pretty real across the age range. Poor service delivery coupled with corruption creates fertile ground for a disaffected electorate. But if there is one lesson to take from the political shifts of 2025, it is that the ballot box remains the most potent weapon in a citizen’s arsenal.
Look no further than New York City. In November, Zohran Mamdani (43), a democratic socialist and former housing counsellor, stunned the establishment by winning the mayoral race. He didn’t just beat a Republican, he toppled a political dynasty in defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo.
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And he did it not by appealing to the status quo, and certainly not by banking on voter apathy. Mamdani won because he mobilised a coalition of the unheard – taxi drivers, young renters and working-class families – who realised that not voting was simply not an option. He turned a legislative track record of fighting for taxi medallion debt relief and free buses into a mandate for running the biggest city in America.
This is a striking counter-narrative to the mood hanging over South Africa as we stare down the barrel of the 2026 local government elections. And nowhere is the cost of apathy more visible than in Johannesburg. Since 2016, the City of Gold has chewed through nine mayors.
We’ve gone from Parks Tau to Herman Mashaba, through the death of Jolidee Matongo, the ousting of Mpho Phalatse and into the farcical “coalition chaos” era of Thapelo Amad (who lasted 87 days) and Kabelo Gwamanda. This is not political theatre, but a governance disaster with a very real price tag. Every time a mayor falls, strategy is abandoned, key municipal contracts are potentially delayed, senior management could be purged and long-term infrastructure maintenance plans could be scrapped in favour of others.
This is why political instability has a domino effect that has a direct, literal cost in the form of a dry tap, pothole-ribboned roads, darkened streets and uncollected rubbish, for starters. Here at home, the refrain of “I’m not voting. That will show them”, is becoming tired and dangerous.
But let’s be clear. We saw this during the “No Water, No Vote” protests that erupted across the commando system suburbs – from Crosby and Brixton to Coronationville – earlier this year. Although the anger was righteous, the slogan is self-defeating. If you don’t vote, you leave your tap in the hands of the same unstable coalitions that let the reservoirs run dry in the first place.
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