Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi Tells South Africans To Stay Home On Election Day — Struggle Icons Betrayed

A PhD-holding politician stood before thousands of supporters last week and delivered a message that would have made Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe weep: do not bother walking to the ballot box. Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the Economic Freedom Fighters’ firebrand spokesperson, declared publicly that casting a vote achieves nothing — a statement that immediately detonated fury across the country’s political landscape and far beyond.

Ndlozi, speaking with the full authority of his doctorate and his parliamentary platform, urged ordinary South Africans to abandon the electoral process entirely. “Voting is useless,” he reportedly told an audience, dismissing the very mechanism that Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years behind bars to secure. That declaration drew instant condemnation from veterans, civic organisations, and heartbroken descendants of the liberation movement who watched footage in stunned disbelief.

The ANC’s national spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Ntuli issued a sharp rebuke, describing the remarks as an insult to every comrade who shed blood on this soil. “Our heroes did not march, bleed, and perish so that educated men could encourage surrender at the polls,” Bhengu-Ntuli told journalists on Tuesday. The Azanian People’s Organisation, custodian of Sobukwe’s legacy, separately demanded a full withdrawal and an apology before week’s end.

Thabo Mbeki negotiated the transition from apartheid oppression specifically to guarantee universal suffrage. Chris Hani, gunned down on a Boksburg driveway in April 1993, understood that democratic participation was the singular prize worth protecting. Sobukwe endured years of solitary confinement on Robben Island because he refused to let disenfranchisement define his people’s destiny. Each of those sacrifices now sits awkwardly beside Ndlozi’s televised dismissal.

Outside the EFF’s Marshalltown offices on Wednesday morning, an elderly woman named Nokukhanya Dlamini clutched a laminated photograph of her late husband, a former MK cadre who lost three fingers at a 1985 Durban rally. She wore his struggle cap. She said nothing. She simply held that image up toward the glass entrance and waited, silently, for someone inside to notice.

The EFF has not retracted anything. No formal apology has emerged. No senior party leader has publicly distanced themselves from their colleague’s position. The question now burning through townships from Khayelitsha to Soshanguve is devastatingly simple: if the educated are telling us to stay home, who exactly does democracy serve.