On 17 March, WCAPD marked World Social Work Day with a series of video reflections that gave South Africans a rare, honest look into the real pressures, decisions, and hopes that shape social work in the disability sector.  What came through most clearly was how much the profession has shifted, from an individual‑focused service to a practice that strengthens families, communities, systems, and organisations.

This shift fits with the spirit of MiAPD, the initiative that encourages all of us to understand, support, and stand behind the APD network as a whole. MiAPD reminds South Africans that disability inclusion is not only the responsibility of organisations, it is a shared commitment.  In many ways, social workers embody this movement every day.  They carry the weight of complex cases, they advocate inside homes and inside boardrooms, they guide families and branch committees, and they hold together the many threads that make WCAPD’s work possible.

Across the Western Cape, WCAPD sees daily how governance, representation, and public systems shape whether persons with disabilities can participate fully in society, including at the ballot box.  The challenges highlighted in the IEC engagement mirror what many of our service users experience: inaccessible information, inconsistent support at voting stations, and public structures that are not yet staffed or designed in ways that reflect disability inclusion.

This is precisely why WCAPD supports the IEC’s acknowledgement that it must “improve, learn and build” with the disability sector.  A constructive partnership, not symbolic gestures, is how real progress happens.  And as the provincial movement MiAPD continues encouraging the Western Cape to understand and support the work of APD branches, these engagements become even more important.  They give space for organisations like ours to bring practical, lived experience into decision‑making.

One of the most striking issues raised in the GroundUp article was the near‑absence of persons with disabilities within the IEC’s temporary election workforce: only 15 of 18,000 officials in the Western Cape self‑identified as having a disability during the 2024 elections.  This is not simply a staffing statistic it is a reminder that institutions cannot credibly champion inclusion if their own structures do not reflect it.

This pattern is not unique to elections.  It mirrors workplace realities across sectors: persons with disabilities remain under‑represented, recruitment seldom prioritises accessibility, and reasonable accommodation is often an afterthought rather than a baseline.

For WCAPD, the IEC’s staffing gaps reinforce principles we advocate for daily in the Western Cape:

These principles apply at voting stations, in workplaces, and across all public systems.

The IEC’s commitment to improved training, stronger engagement with the disability sector, and more representative staffing is a positive start.  But inclusion will only be achieved through consistent, long‑term collaboration.

For WCAPD, the message is clear: accessible elections are about more than the mechanics of voting.  They signal whether persons with disabilities are fully recognised as equal citizens, not just on election day, but every day.  And the work of building that recognition must continue across the Western Cape in every school, workplace, branch, neighbourhood, and public service.

WCAPD will continue to lend its experience, its data, and the voices of the communities we serve to any platform that advances that goal.