Not just apathy: Why young South Africans are skipping a big election

For Jabu Simelane, things were supposed to be different.

Yes, when he was born in 1994, his mother still mopped the floors and scrubbed the toilets of white people. Yes, his father still laid the bricks to build their houses.

But Jabu, their youngest son, was going to grow up in a different world from what they had. A world where Nelson Mandela was the president instead of being a prisoner. A world where the people in power looked like them, and spoke for them.

Apartheid was over, and as the couple rocked Jabu to sleep in their tiny Johannesburg cottage, a new South Africa was rushing in to take its place.

Suddenly the son could go to the same posh suburban public schools as the family his

Post-apartheid expectationsNot voting, but politically active