Elect leaders to ‘correct’ errors, bishops urge South African voters

South Africa’s bishops called for a “free and fair” poll ahead of Wednesday’s elections, and urged voters to elect leaders with “ethical and moral values”.

Church agencies have made consistent demands for reform in recent months amid worsening crime rates and rising unemployment, and the bishops have warned that the recent murders of two Catholic priests were indicative of wider problems.

Reflecting on the thirtieth anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic elections, Bishop João Noé Rodrigues of Tzaneen said the election “gives the people of South Africa the opportunity to take a critical look at how far we’ve gone, what we’ve done well, where we’ve lost it and what it is that we can do”.

He continued: “This election therefore allows us to be able to correct that.”

The African National Congress has held power in every election since the end of the apartheid regime in 1994, but its support has dramatically declined in recent years. Polling has reported widespread disillusionment, especially among younger voters, while the electoral commission has registered a record number of political parties to contest the election.

South Africa’s bishops have supported the Moral Regeneration Movement ahead of the election, an initiative to promote Catholic Social Teaching and voter education among young people.

Analysts said people born after 1994 would be an important demographic for the election. They make up the majority of the country’s eligible voters, but face mass unemployment.

Young people carry “a lot of potential, of power to be able to influence the process, for better or for worse, hopefully for better,” said Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, who chairs the Moral Regeneration Movement.

“Unless people go out in their numbers to cast their vote, to express their wish, their aspirations, their hope for the future of this country to give a clear mandate to whoever, whatever political parties takes charge,” he said. “Unless that is recognised, then our election process may not yield the kind of results that we hope for.”

The 85 per cent of South Africans who identify as Christian also “have influence and are probably one of the most prominent single-voting groups”, said Fr Russell Pollitt SJ. Writing on the website of the Jesuit Institute South Africa, where he is director, Fr Pollitt said voting was a way of “exercising co-responsibility for the common good”.

“[We] have to look at our reality carefully and, with that reality in mind, discern who might best be able to advance the common good with policies that are likely to work and strategies that support them,” he said.

South Africa’s situation was, he said, “a ticking social time bomb: massive youth unemployment, crippling poverty, deteriorating infrastructure – noted especially in the health and education sector – and an economic structure that serves only a few.”

In February, the South African bishops issued a statement urging people to “vote according to your experience and your conscience, not according to unquestioning loyalty to one or another political party”.

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