Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
Cape Town - In May 2024, millions of South Africans will walk into their polling stations and put an “X” next to a candidate and party.
Hundreds of thousands will also do so during by-elections that also provide a glimpse of the shifting political landscape in our democracy.
Casting a vote ought to be a potent moment – democracy at the end of a pencil – yet I suspect many citizens will once again report leaving the booth feeling uneasy, disillusioned and powerless.
Why? Because instead of each election being about trusting and creating a better future for all, fear, anger, and hopelessness tend to be driving factors.
Lack of trust in politicians and political parties is hardly front-page news.
Still, levels of distrust in South Africa are at an all-time high, mainly due to a lack of leadership to steer the country towards prosperity. It leaves the country open to a dangerous “trust vacuum”, where manipulation of the genuine political causes of the people, emotional truths about unemployment or illegal immigration and sleights of hand can flourish.
The country is increasingly full of unlikely people in high office. We are in the age of corrupt politicians and other leaders in different sectors of our society, as catalogued in the reports of the state capture commission, the auditor-general, and numerous court judgments.
We witness daily the investment of trust in screen presence in the media and noise in the radio airwaves, a trick of smoke and tweets designed to divert the public attention from the main issues affecting our lives.
Perhaps it is time we remind ourselves that voting is about the admittedly drearier business of working out who we can trust the most – or, at any rate, distrust the least – based on solid reasons rather than showbiz pizazz.
It turns out there is a relatively simple formula for judging genuine trustworthiness.
It does not matter if you decide on a member of the school governing body, a councillor or a parliamentarian, the four traits of trustworthiness are the same: reliability, competence, empathy, and integrity.
However, I would not like to give the impression that assessing candidates according to these criteria is straightforward. Far from it.
I cannot entirely agree with the SA Human Rights Commission’s recent report on improving local government, calling for minimum education qualifications for public office holders, such as mayors and councillors, to ensure capable and qualified people are in these positions.
“Inevitably, such an approach may have implications for democratic participation as some people may be barred from contesting certain offices,” says the report.
“However, the lack of minimum qualifications for public officials means critical officials in decision-making positions cannot meaningfully perform their duties. The introduction of minimum educational requirements would not be unique to SA as other jurisdictions have similar requirements for public officials,” reads the report.
Regarding the competency trait of trustworthiness, South Africans have become accustomed to the sorry state depicted in the Municipal Demarcation Board’s periodic reports assessing the capacity of municipalities.
The Municipal Structures Act mandates these reports, and they advise the provincial governments to consider changes to the existing division of powers and functions across district and local municipalities. There are three main areas of assessment.
First is individual capacity, which provides for attitude and behaviour accumulated through education and values. Second is institutional capacity, which includes the human resource and strategic leadership potential found within the municipality.
Third is environmental capacity, which includes conditions necessary for establishing power at individual and institutional levels.
And so, instead of introducing education qualifications as an eligibility requirement to stand for public office, we should let voters sift through candidates and decide.
The broad contours of the constitutional duties of the state to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the right to candidacy in South Africa mainly consist of a negative duty on the state to refrain from imposing unjustifiable eligibility requirements or disqualifications from standing for public office.
The Constitution safeguards the right to candidacy against denying eligibility through unreasonable conditions. Any citizen above 18 years of age, with an ID, and who appears on the voters roll can stand for public office.
The grounding democratic values of human dignity, equality, and freedom create a presumption favouring eligibility and inclusion. Introducing minimum education qualifications for public office-holders cannot limit them.
What are voters to make of that?
There’s a catch in all this. Finding and voting for competence is critical.
Political polls tend to ask voters: Who do you trust the most? It’s a terrible way of framing the trust question. The better question is: How much can we trust someone to do x, y or z? That is, to do a specific task. Redesign the health system. Tackle climate change.
Handle safety and security. Manage a budget of R400 billion.
That kind of contextual thinking gets us closer to assessing competence.
I may trust the EFF to disrupt proceedings in the legislative bodies or a DA MP to tweet something stupid at 3am, but I do not trust their policies on reducing unemployment and crime.
As a voter, I must decide which trust and competence issues matter most. In doing so, I can sift through the trustworthy and competent candidates who deserve my vote.
South Africans must find innovative ways to elect reliable leaders.
Reliability comes down to consistently doing what they said they would do over time. Ultimately, it’s about knowing and feeling that you can depend on this person long term.
For example, there were many politicians in the past with whom we might not have agreed with their principles, but at least we knew they would stick to them.
Regrettably, we cannot say the same about politicians in coalition governments who are stifling local economic development because of selfish interests.
It is a populist game we cannot keep falling for, and we cannot let it continue distorting our trust filter. A politician who flip-flops on issue after issue, like a teenager trying on outfits, raises questions of reliability.
On the path to the 2024 elections, we should ask ourselves: Am I ready to sift through trustworthy candidates from a broad list, or am I voting for someone who merely mouths something I want to hear?
When standing in the privacy of the election booth, stubby pencil in hand, we are not just voting, but part of a crucial exercise in trust.
Nyembezi is a researcher, policy analyst and human rights activist
Cape Times