Why Are We Still Voting for Parties in Local Elections?

In The aftermath of another low-turnout for regional and local elections, the pundits will blame apathy.

They’ll say the youth are disengaged, the electorate are indifferent.

But let’s be honest: this isn’t apathy; it’s clarity.

Voters are tired of choosing between incompetence and corruption.

Tired of party slates filled with loyalists who neither live in nor serve the communities they claim to represent.

Tired of watching local clinics crumble while candidates campaign with national slogans and imported charisma.

Local governance should be about potholes, not party manifestos.

About access to water, not policies.

About the aunties who run cuca shops, the youth leader who organises cleanups, the nurse who stayed when the clinic ran dry.

Instead, we’re handed slates of strangers fielded by national parties who treat our constituencies like chessboards.

VOTER PROTEST

We vote for colours, not characters. For slogans, not service. Then we wonder why nothing changes.
This is not voter apathy. It’s voter protest.

A quiet refusal to participate in a system that rewards performance over presence, loyalty over leadership.

Politics has become a refuge for the untalented and the unaccountable.
Ethical leadership is the exception, not the rule.

So let’s ask the real question: why are we still voting for parties in local elections?

Why not vote for people, real people; who live here, serve here, and will be held accountable here?

Why not demand electoral reforms that prioritise independent candidates, community assemblies, and public scorecards over party machinery?

WHAT WE NEED

We don’t need more manifestos. We need mechanics who fix the streetlights.

Teachers who fight for school roofs. Elders who remember what this neighbourhood used to be – and what it could become again.

The revolution won’t be televised. But it might begin at the constituency level, when we finally say: no more party proxies. No more loyalty tests. No more voting for the lesser evil.

We want leaders who answer to us – not to headquarters. And we’re done with waiting.

• – The views expressed in this piece are solely those of Nguvitjita Meeja, a cultural critic committed to radical transformation and public accountability.

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