Every day, young people in the Free State live with the consequences of local government failures, but civic education rarely reaches them. From 5 to 10 October 2026, the YOUth Choose Your Leaders programme engaged 266 students at the University of the Free State’s QwaQwa and Bloemfontein campuses and at Maluti TVET College, weeks before the local government elections on 4 November.
Together with Project Vote, a project of the University of Pretoria’s Emerging Scholars Initiative, SAIIA ran the programme in the Free State in response to concerns about deteriorating local governance performance.
Head of SAIIA’s Youth Programme, Donavan Fullard, and scholar Khanyisile Makhubele led the sessions alongside Dr Heather Thuynsma, Yanga Malotana, Stéfan Meyer and Dean Barnard.
The programme took a different approach, starting each workshop with participants’ lives, not the Constitution. In a town hall, students listed stalled service delivery, such as unreliable water or electricity supply, poor sanitation and transport infrastructure, and limited job security for young graduates, as key issues.
A bridging session and the sorting game ‘Whose Job Is It?’ traced each issue to the responsible sphere of government. In a ward council budget simulation, many students built a budget for the first time and were surprised by the horse-trading it demanded. The programme ended with a mock voting station and personal action plans.
The workshops exposed a gap between voting and influence. Students did not know, for instance, that they could attend council meetings and raise questions and comments there. Most registered participants pledged to vote on 4 November 2026. And those not yet registered vowed to attend council meetings and register ahead of the 2029 elections. A ballot every five years is one form of power; a seat in the council chamber offers another.
The handbook and participant toolkit are available to download in the following languages:
English
Afrikaans
Sesotho
isiZulu
We thank the Social Justice Initiative (SJI) for their support.
