The posters are up, but they’re all men staring down and asking us to register and vote for them in the next elections.
It didn’t occur to me until my 11-year-old daughter Misha pointed this out and it made me think that we could do so much better if a woman was president of South Africa, writes Gasant Abarder in a new #SliceofGasant column.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here.
The election posters have gone up. Notably, the DA in my suburb sent the same tired old messages, and then a chap by the name of Songezo Zibi urged folks to register so they could vote for his new party, Rise Mzansi.
Zibi was a terrific editor of Business Day. He is a big deal on Twitter too, or X, or whatever it is called these days. But that is probably where his appeal ends. For the rest of the non-tweeting, non-newspaper reading public (of which there are plenty these days), a deep dive on Google is needed. Don’t get me wrong, Zibi is precisely what we need right now. Young, smart and astute.
I haven’t seen any ANC ones yet. They must still have cash flow problems. But I did see a guy flogging 1994 election posters on my favourite social media hangout these days, Facebook Marketplace.
He is selling an ACDP Kenneth Meshoe poster for R250.
A poster of Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s IFP poster will cost you R500.
But the one for General Constand Viljoen vannie Vryheidsfront (before they added Plus, like it was extra strength Disprin) sells for a whopping R650.
Constand is Afrikaans for constant, which is apt because he constantly spoke kak! Also, are these the kinds of things people now put in their man caves?
I explained to my 11-year-old daughter, Misha who Mr Zibi was. I then showed her the ads of the 1994 posters. She then asked: ‘Dad, why were there no women party leaders and why do we still not have a woman president.’
‘You see, dad,’ she continued, ‘a woman president would be so much better. You don’t see women fighting and being violent. Our economy would be much better too. Look at what happened when my principal Mrs Petersen came in. The school is now better than before and everyone wants to come to our school because of her.’
Misha has had an eye-opening year that culminated in major highlights over the last few weeks. She was the under-10 girls’ team’s most improved player and was elected vice-captain for a club side. I am also her assistant coach but the head coach made these decisions.
The season started with heavy defeats and lots of tears because the under-10 girls from Salt River Blackpool Football Club were the only girls’ team in a league of boys’ teams. But they worked hard under the mentorship of coach Abduragiem ‘Beatle’ Jacobs and me. The results started getting better towards the end of the season with a few wins and draws. Now the boys were crying from the crunching tackles of our girls.
I also coach Misha in the first-ever girls’ soccer team in the 65-year history of her school. The school’s decision to make her captain wasn’t mine either but made sense because she was the only one of the 15 girls with playing experience. These girls are brave, enthusiastic and keen to learn.
Then, just over a week ago, she met Desiree Ellis because I was moderating the Salt River launch of the Banyana coach’s new biography Magic. Since then, Misha hasn’t stopped talking about Coach Ellis telling her she’d be keeping a keen eye on her career.
‘I mean, look at Coach Ellis. Why can’t she be our president? She can do anything. She’s won Afcon, dad, was African coach of the year, and took us to two world cups and played soccer on the same field I now play on,’ she said
‘And I know Michelle Obama wasn’t the president of America, but she could be. New Zealand also had a good woman president. I think it’s time for a woman president and our country will be better.’
I asked her what she’d do differently if she was the president.
‘We must treat old people better. Why must Mama and Papa wait in queues for pensions and hospitals? There must be more orphanages and I like your idea for Salt River, dad: A sports field for different sports in every part of South Africa and where children can study or do their homework too with internet and printers,’ she said.
‘People who don’t have jobs can grow fruit and vegetables and sell them. What’s left over can be used to make food for people who don’t have it. And we must order less things from America. Why must we eat Kellogg’s when someone in South Africa can start their own cereal and everyone buys that?’
I’m raising a socialist. I wondered where she got all these ideas.
‘From you and my teacher, of course. I think I’d make a good president.’
I’d vote for Misha. South Africa is ready for a woman president. That no party will plausibly put forward a woman candidate as their presidential candidate next year is an utter disgrace.
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Picture: Gasant Abarder