Youth urged to be active in politics

NATIONAL Youth Council chairperson Mandela Kapere says he wants more young people to participate in political activities in the country and influence the decision-making process.

Kapere said young people should also be involved in policy dialogues that contribute to “a national consensus of what should be happening in our country”, as opposed to being passive citizens.

He was speaking to in an exclusive interview on the importance of youth participation in national elections recently.

Kapere said he was disappointed by the lack of youth participation in political activities and other decision-making processes in the country. He made reference to the low voter turnout of the youth during the 2015 regional council and local authority elections.

The Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) concluded in its 2015 performance reports on the regional and local authority elections that Namibians, mostly young people, were less interested in participating.

The report shows that only 40% of the 1,2 million registered voters turned up at the polls during the 2015 regional and local authority elections.

A 72% voter turnout was recorded during the 2014 presidential and National Assembly elections. Young people were the least participants in all the elections, the report showed.

Kapere said it is unacceptable that young people, despite being in the majority, are always the fewest participants in national elections.

This year, ECN chief electoral officer Theo Mujoro said the commission is targeting to register about 300 000 voters, being young people who turned 18 between 2015 and 2019.

The supplementary voters’ registration for this year’s election starts next month, and Kapere urged the youth to use this opportunity to register so that they can participate in the presidential and National Assembly elections in November.

If young people are not actively involved in the decision-making processes, he observed, their problems and concerns would not be addressed by the government.

“The nature of modern-day democracy is such that not all of us can govern at the same time, not everybody can be in Cabinet. So, it is important that we also participate in local elections because the calibre of local leaders also determines the quality of service provision, and the changes we want to see in our constituencies,” he continued.

Young people will thus also not be able to effectively hold politicians to account if they do not vote.

“You must exercise your right to vote, to hold political parties accountable for the promises they make. But as long as we leave certain processes to those who have been there, then we will also minimise the impact that we were supposed to be making as young people on the political system,” Kapere stressed.

This year, the NYC will carry out its voter education campaign called the ‘Stop Waiting Campaign’.

Under this campaign, the youth council will focus on disseminating information on the importance of registering as voters to the youth. It mainly targets first-time voters at high schools and tertiary institutions.

“Young people are not registering, or they are not aware that the voting processes include that. One of the reasons might be that they are first-time voters and many of them have never voted before, so we need to educate these young people,” he said.

Other organisations, including civil society and political parties, were also urged to come up with programmes to encourage young people to vote.

“It is important in this electoral cycle that we focus on energising young people about registering, not only about voting. We need to have a cross-sectoral alliance of civil society organisations and the government, together with the ECN and the media, to encourage young people to register.

“The fact that a lot of young people are not registered speaks to a failure of us as a society to educate young people about the electoral processes,” he continued.

Political commentator Ndumba Kamwanyah echoed Kapere’s sentiments that young people need to be actively involved in society.

In an interview with The Namibian last Tuesday, Kamwanyah said if young people are only complaining about poor service delivery on social media and not participating in the decision-making processes, “the status quo will remain”.

“The only way young people can get their issues addressed is by participating in elections. If you don’t participate, you are saying in a way that you agree with the status quo,” he reasoned.

Kamwanyah added that political parties must also come up with tailor-made programmes to attract young people, and encourage them to vote. The Popular Democratic Movement (PDM)’s youth league spokesperson Maximilliant Katjimune said he was equally concerned about the negative attitude of young people when it comes to voting.

He noted that the problem could be that the youth do not understand the importance of being involved in politics, or it could be ascribed to the lack of political education in the basic education curriculum.

“Indeed, it is also our responsibility as political parties to defeat youth voter apathy. For the PDM, we have come up with a volunteers’ forum, where thousands of young brave Namibians have volunteered to campaign […] and actively participate in this year’s elections,” Katjimune added.