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Human Rights Month reminds us to reclaim the promise of the right to vote

21 March 2024 Photo SUPPLIED

Opinion article Dr Ina Gouws, Senior Lecturer: Political Studies and Governance, University of the Free State.

In a year where at least 64 countries will hold elections, it is inevitable that we reflect on issues such as the right to vote, the importance of voting, and the role of elections in a democratic process. The truth is, since the earliest elections were held in Greece in around 508 BC, exclusions were part of the process. Only wealthy landowners were allowed to vote. Male landowners, that is. The first popular election where all citizens could vote, and the majority vote won, is believed to have taken place in Sparta in 745 BC. For many centuries, examples like these were very few.

The right to vote

The history of the right to vote is mostly depicted in the history of suffrage – defined as ‘franchise’, or the right to vote – and the exercising of that right. These movements are rooted in the plight of minority groups and generally disenfranchised groups (those discriminated against, such as the poor and the landless), and their fight for the right to vote. You can easily read up on the most chronicled movements in history, such as Women’s Suffrage. The bravery, determination, and suffering endured to secure the right to vote is legendary. And once they finally won the right to vote, this did not mean they could run for office. Another fight was ahead for this democratic right. The Civil Rights movement in America is another example of a movement where the disenfranchised fought for, amongst other civil rights, the right to vote. This included, of course, black women, who were discriminated against from within various Women’s Suffrage movements.

In South Africa, the history of the right to vote is entangled with our colonial history. After the two Boer Wars, decisions had to be made as to who would be the decision-makers going forward. In the Cape Colony, all races had the right to vote – but only if you were male and had the economic qualifications, which means only the male elite across races could vote. In the negotiations to unify the Boer republics with the Cape Colony and Natal at the time, black people’s right to vote came under scrutiny. When South Africa finally became a union, its Constitution was put forward to the British government for approval. The British government was not keen to allow voting rights for black people. Thus, in the 1909 Constitution, only black people in the Cape retained their right to vote. The prevalent racial intolerance in South Africa kept this issue very high on the agenda, and in the 1930s the South African Parliament finally had the two-thirds majority needed to remove voting rights for black people from the Constitution. Finally, in 1951, the Coloured Voters Roll was also scrapped. In resistance against the diminishing civil rights experienced by these groups in South Africa, liberation movements such as the ANC were formed. One of the civil rights they fought for, for many decades, was the right to vote; a right finally won and exercised for the first time in 1994.

The value of voting

So why am I providing this VERY brief look at history and the right to vote?

The value of voting has lost its lustre in South Africa. Despite all this history of the disenfranchised winning the right to vote, and the great enthusiasm for and faith in this aspect of the democratic process, South Africans look at voting with far less excitement only 30 years after the first democratic elections. Of course, we come by our growing indifference honestly. Those the majority have given their vote to have let us down greatly. And when we look at the candidate lists for the governing party for our upcoming elections, it doesn’t seem that we can expect better.

But this is still a democracy, dear voter! There will be more parties than ever on the ballot in 2024. We have a Constitution protecting this right to vote for any party you choose. What a notion! Looking back at history, especially from the vantage point of this current Human Rights Month, this right to vote is still at the centre of a system where the people have the final say. You must exercise this right with vigour, with determination, and with defiance against anything or anyone who wishes to weaken our country even further.

I mentioned decision-making earlier. This is what voting is. Look around you and decide if you are content with your circumstances. Look at your wider community and communities in your province and how they make an existence, and decide if you are satisfied with what you see and hear. The vast majority of people in this country can’t possibly be content or satisfied with what they see or what they LIVE through every day. Dear voter, neither are you, right?

So, VOTE in these elections if you are eligible. VOTE. It is your RIGHT.

News Archive

During 2011: Appointments

2011-12-01

Dr Lis Lange: Senior Director: DIRAP

Dr Lis Lange, an Argentinean by birth, immigrated to South Africa twenty years ago – a few weeks after Nelson Mandela had walked through the gates of Victor Verster. For the past ten years, she has been involved in quality assurance for higher education institutions at the Council on Higher Education at national level.

She is assisting our university in the areas of quality assurance and academic planning, contributing to the development of deep intellectual debate and multi-disciplinary research.

Prof. Charles Dumas, Department of Drama and Theatre Arts

Prof. Charles Dumas, Extraordinary Professor in our Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, will be spending three months per year for the next three years at our university to help develop filmmaking, specifically focusing on the development of the Video Unit Planned for the Department.

Prof. Dumas started the year off with the production, Our Father’s Daughters, which was produced during the Mini-festival as well as at the Reitz Four reconciliation meeting. The production was also turned into a short film. Prof. Dumas gave film-acting classes to the third-year drama students. He directed multiple productions, such as the third-year module production Ipi Zombi, the Grahamstown Festival production, Seven Guitars and the Dance/drama production, Race, Reconciliation and the Reitz Four.

Prof. Daniel Plaatjies, UFS Business School

Prof. Daniel Plaatjies is the former Director and Head of the Graduate School of Public and Development Management at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was mainly responsible for the leading, directing and managing of strategic academic programmes, teaching, research, governance, service management and monitoring. Prof. Plaatjies, who was appointed as Visiting Professor at our Business School this year, will as part of his new duties at our Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, be lecturing part-time and supervise our PhD students.

Prof. Johann Neethling, Department of Private Law

Prof. Johann Neethling’s career is now completing its full circle with his appointment as Senior Professor in our Department of Private Law. In 1965 he was a first-year at this university. With his nine law text books and nearly 200 articles, together with 40 years’ experience in academic training he is of inestimable value to this Department. His publications contribute to the establishment of our university as a research institute.

Prof. Hussein Solomon, Department of Political Science

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Prof. Hussein Solomon joined our university this year as Senior Professor in the Department of Political Science. Formerly he worked in peace NGOs, advised diplomats and acts as a serving officer in the South African Air Force.

His area of research expertise includes conflict and conflict resolution in Africa; South African Foreign Policy; international relations theory; religious fundamentalism and population movements within the developing world. He is also the author of a number of books, including one on global jihad and one on India's secret relationship with apartheid South Africa.

He is also member of the internationally renowned Our Humanity in the Balance (OHIB) organisation, where his role is to bring these disparate communities together and to focus energies on a common project.

Prof. André Keet, International Institute for Studies in Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice

Prof. André Keet, our Director of the International Institute for Studies in Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice, joined the University of Pretoria on a part-time basis in 2008, whilst being a Commissioner on the Commission for Gender Equality. Later he left the Commission and joined the University of Fort Hare. “I was happy to join academia and now also serve on the Stellenbosch University Council; therefore I am very aware of the challenges facing higher education,” he said.

His vision for the Institute is to support higher-education transformation, promote non-discrimination, reconciliation and human rights, build national, regional and international networks, and developing ‘new’ languages, knowledge and discourses for reconciliation and social justice, all to the benefit of our university and South Africa.”

Prof. Helene Strauss, Department of English

Prof. Helene Strauss completed her PhD at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, where she taught courses on Film Studies, Children’s Literature and South African Literature and Culture. “I was subsequently appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.” She joined our Department of English this year.

Prof. Strauss has an on-going preoccupation with questions concerning social justice, race, gender and ethical interpersonal interaction in South Africa and beyond.

Prof. EC Ejiogu, Centre for Africa Studies

After 22 years in the United States of America, Prof. EC Ejiogu decided to return to Africa – to his roots – to join our university’s Centre for Africa Studies at the beginning of 2011.

Before joining the Centre, he was Assistant Research Professor in the Centre for Innovation at the University of Maryland, College Park. As Senior Researcher at the Centre, he has already helped with the streamlining of the academic programme, restructuring it to enable students to gain skills necessary to deliver a research proposal towards a dissertation after their three years of study. He has also taken up PhD and Master’s supervision.

His latest publications include a book published in March 2011 with the title, Roots of Political Instability in Nigeria, and a book co-edited with Prof. Kwandiwe Kondlo, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies, Africa in focus: Governance in the 21st century, published in April 2011.

Pura Mgolombane, Vice-Dean: Student Affairs

Bringing with him a decade of experience in Student Affairs our new Assistant-Dean for Student Life and Leadership, Pura Mgolombane, has big plans for student development. He says his office wants to help Kovsies increase its throughput rate and produce socially well-adjusted and employable graduates in South Africa, the continent and anywhere in the world.

Before joining Kovsies, he was employed as Director: Student Life, Governance and Culture at Walter Sisulu University. Pura, who has a background in Human Resources, Business Management and Corporate Law, says his academic training has empowered him with skills to ensure that the Student Life and Leadership is properly led, governed and managed.

Prof. Hasina Ebrahim, School for Social Sciences and Language Education

This former academic from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal was appointed as Associate Professor at our School for Social Sciences and Language Education in the Faculty of Education. Amongst others, she is the project coordinator for the Faculty’s Early Childhood and Foundation Phase Teacher Education Programme and the MEd and PhD supervisor in the programme.

Prof. Ebrahim is also the Deputy-President of the first South African Research Association for Early Childhood Education (birth to nine). “This is certainly a milestone to profile the university in terms of its thrust towards excellence in research,” she says. One of the main aims of the association is to shape the research agenda for a marginalised field in South Africa.

Prof. Corli Witthuhn, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Description: 2011 Appointments_Corli Witthuhn Tags: 2011 Appointments_Corli Witthuhn

Prof. Corli Witthuhn, a former Bloemfonteiner, attained her PhD in Microbiology at our university. Therafter, in 1999, she was appointed as a lecturer at Stellenbosch University and later as Vice-Dean.

Currently she is our Vice-Dean in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. She hopes to sustain her research here at our University.

Her life motto? “Opportunities are presented in the form of obstacles,” she says.

Prof. Melanie Walker

Prof. Melanie Walker is a prominent South African scholar who has been working as Professor of Higher Education Studies at the world-leading University of Nottingham in the UK, where she been Director of Postgraduate Students and a Director of Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences. She will join the University of the Free State in February 2012 as Senior University Professor in the Postgraduate School.

She is a graduate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of Cape Town, where she completed her PhD, after teaching in disadvantaged secondary schools for a number of years. Prior to working at Nottingham she worked at the Universities of Sheffield, West of England and Glasgow, as well as the Universities of Cape Town and the Western Cape. She is also a Fellow of the Human Development and Capability Association. She is currently Director of Research Training and a senior researcher in the EU-funded Marie Curie EDUWEL project, which includes senior researchers from eight European countries and 15 early-stage researchers.

With a long-standing commitment to social-justice research and equality practices, she is currently widely recognised internationally as leading in the application of the capability approach and human development to higher education policy and practice. Among others, she has led or participated in research projects funded by the NRF (South Africa), the Higher Education Academy (UK), HEFCE (UK), EU, and ESRC/DfID, which funded the Public-Good Professionals’ Capability Index research project.

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