Today we celebrate democracy

SPECIAL POST: South Africa votes

At the start of the year, I posted ten questions that 2024 might answer. The first of them asked: Will democracy survive?

The world will come out to vote in 2024. India, Britain, Mexico, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and, of course, the United States will all have presidential elections, to name just a few. Africa, too, will visit the ballot box, from Senegal, Tunisia and Ghana to southern Africa, where Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Mauritius and South Africa will all vote for new presidents. More people will vote in 2024 than in any previous year.

And yet, democracy is under threat. Across the globe, voters will grapple with challenges such as misinformation, political polarisation and the increasing influence of money in politics. Such factors contribute to a growing disillusionment among citizens, who may feel that their votes have less impact on the decisions that affect their lives.

Today, South Africans will vote in our seventh democratic elections, thirty years after the historic 1994 elections. Although 1994 is perhaps not the best comparison – as I explained in this post – it is an important marker; if the pre-election polls are to be believed, we are likely to see the African National Congress receive less than 50%, necessitating an alliance. I wrote about the most likely alliance partners here ($).

The one thing this election is likely to do is to expand the opportunity set of economic policies. A poor outcome would be if that opportunity set expands to the extreme left or extreme right: to populism that, as this post highlights, inevitably leads to poorer outcomes for everyone, especially the poorest. A great outcome would be an expansion of policy options that promote economic growth. What those policies could and should be will surely be the subject of discussion over the coming months.

Today, though, let’s celebrate the fact that South Africans across the country will head to their nearest voting station to cast their vote in what in all likelihood will be a generally free and fair election. We have perhaps become too accustomed to what is still an elusive freedom for millions of people around the globe. Sure, there are issues: concerns about voter safety in KwaZulu-Natal. The new MK Party, in particular, has questioned the integrity of the Independent Electoral Commission, the body overseeing the elections. But my impression is that this election, more than any other, has been contested in a spirit of true democratic participation; the diversity of election posters hugging street lights across the country (and the intensity of debates on X) is testament to that.

So go get a coffee, grab your ID, and join the queues of South Africans across the country hoping to make our small contribution in building a better, more prosperous society.

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