Youth Representation in South Africa: Trends and Challenges

The overall picture in African politics unveils youth as a significant group and constituency, with a great potential to impact and transform the political landscape. However, existing scholarship delineates two primary trajectories: a decline in youth participation and detachment from conventional political avenues, attributed to factors such as limited access to political information, weak perceptions of electoral contexts, and diminished levels of national identity and democratic support; and the co-optation of youth by formal political authorities, despite their exclusion from significant participation venues. In South Africa, the disparity between youth representation in parliament and the population is striking. Utilizing data from the Afrobarometer, the first section aims at mapping youth’s political interests and examining trends in student protest, with a particular focus on the #FeesMustFall Movement. The second part focuses on youth representation in the National Assembly: employing an original biographic dataset from HOME Project (How Members of Parliament in Africa Represent Their Constituencies), we analyse the profiles of youth parliamentarians, including variables such as gender, party affiliation, locality, and education. By analysing their work (expressed through parliamentary questions and committee participation in the legislature elected in 2019), we evaluate the youth parliamentarians’ (and the National Assembly’s as a whole) responsiveness to the youth concerns previously identified. Understanding who are the youth MPs of South Africa and how does their parliamentary work address the concerns of the overall youth population is our main research goal.