Durban – Chris Pappas, the mayor of uMngeni Local Municipality, has urged young people to take part in the national government elections next year.
The popular uMngeni mayor said there are millions of South Africans who are eligible to vote but are not exercising this right.
Pappas warned that these South Africans cannot sit on the sidelines in next year’s national government elections as this could be the most consequential elections in the past few years.
He said most of these eligible voters were young people.
Pappas was speaking recently, addressing a largely white and elderly population at a business breakfast organised by a finance and investment company that was hosted in Pietermaritzburg.
The mayor said the elderly were the ones that helped the DA secure a win in uMngeni in the last local government elections.
“We won that municipality by 42 votes, 42, so every single vote counts,” he said, adding that if those people had decided to vote for another party, the DA would have lost.
“The elders, who stood in the (voting) line until 12, 1, 2 in the morning,” he added.
Pappas pointed out that next year’s elections was key and a real possibility for change.
He said the population was now seeing through the scare tactic that has been used by other parties against the DA, which include that if the DA was voted in power, it would remove some of the social nets like social grants that many people rely on.
The mayor said the elections will be very exciting in terms of the possibilities of governance.
He said the current polling showed that an IFP/DA partnership will secure a higher vote margin ahead of a possible EFF/ANC partnership.
“The decision in 2024 is, do you want an EFF/ANC coalition or do you want an alternative, what (DA leader) John Steenhuisen calls a moonshot pact,” Pappas concluded.