In this latest #SliceofGasant, columnist Gasant Abarder urges South Africans to vote with their heads, not their hearts and forget about the faces on election posters. Cast your vote next to the person and party that will make the biggest difference to your household and community, he writes.
It’s the season of kissing babies, cutting ribbons and ridiculous promises that will never be kept now that the president has announced the elections will take place on 29 May 2024. There are three months to go before voting and it’s about to get mad.
We’ve seen this before yet every time we fall for the same trap by voting for faces rather than substance. Take Cyril Ramaphosa, for example: he went missing for a good few months before emerging at the Springbok victory, SA’s victory at the International Court of Justice against Israel and on ANC election posters. Take credit for the hard work of others. Another five years of Cyril’s inaction? It’s a hard no for me.
Ramaphosa’s presidency has been an abject failure, promising but not delivering to end loadshedding, unemployment at quite possibly its highest ever and the cost of living prohibitively high. It’s hard to think what he’ll be remembered for when Jacob Zuma’s legacy of a mass rollout of lifesaving Aids drugs had a bigger impact. This is a party that has squandered billions of rands through corruption and waste. It is no longer the party of Nelson Mandela.
John Steenhuisen and Co of the DA are about to be demoted as the official opposition. This party has slid further and further to the far right. So far, they make the ACDP and Freedom Front Plus look like choir boys. Inequality has grown even higher where it governs and it has shown its hand in the Palestine crisis by only responding to the Hamas attack in October last year – never mind the 75 years of Palestinian oppression by Israel that went before.
The EFF is going to be the big winner of the next elections and is poised to become the official opposition or even a kingmaker – but no thanks to its leader Julius Malema. His divisive, polarising brand of politics appeals to the base emotions that invite disaffected youth to vote. Take Malema away and you’ll find an actual sound manifesto that goes some way towards addressing the problems we face. But manifestos, evidently, don’t win elections. It’s the personality that can scream the loudest who wins the day.
What remains is a collection of small parties who at least don’t hide what they are. There is Cape Independence (or whatever they’re called) who want a Cape republic divorced from the rest of South Africa (hahaha), there is the Patriotric Alliance who make no bones about hating only black foreign nationals, and those lovely folks from the ACDP who are pro-Israeli and who are homophobic.
Here is the rub: they’re all full of crap and empty promises. They’re all in it for themselves and you’ll be hard-pressed to find altruistic individuals who serve in the best interest of South Africa.
If you’re feeling like me; that is, unsure of who to vote for, then go back to basics. Look at your community and who is always there to pick up the slack. I am involved with two community football clubs in Salt River and Woodstock and the two have realised that if they approach the DA-run City of Cape Town as a united front they can achieve more.
The truth is, the DA-run City of Cape Town has outsourced its social responsibilities to these football clubs. It goes far beyond participating in football. Both community clubs recruit from the local schools where the sport is no longer possible, the nearby orphanages and the children of refugees. Children are fed and often kitted out with football boots.
The DA councillor looks after the Observatory and the Biscuit Mill but not so much the innards of Salt River and Woodstock, where these clubs are based. The Salt River people, mobilised by the protests for a free Palestine, have vowed to shun the DA at the polls. Let’s see if that actually happens.
The point is, there are no rebates for these clubs when it comes to paying water and electricity and they have to beg for leases of the fields they play on when they’re the only recreational outlets for young people in the area. The fields are poorly kept and there has been a water leak on the lower field for more than a year.
Like the people of Salt River, you should vote with your head and not your heart because these politicians may appear to be mortal enemies on TV and in parliament, but in the corridors, they’re laughing their asses off at us and also all the way to the bank.
If the local soccer field across your house has become a dumping ground for trash, then it is a failure of the party that is in government, and they need to be punished at the polls.
We, the people of South Africa, need to take back the power.
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